By Major Van Harl USAF Ret
Wisconsin –-(Ammoland.com)- Marianne is the classic symbol of the French Revolution.
She is the beautiful, innocent young French girl who takes up arms to fight the opposition with her fellow countrymen.
She is depicted in hundreds of statues and paintings. The most readily recognizable to Americans would be the La Marianne de Delacroix painting. It depicts the heroine in the middle of battle holding the flag of France in one hand and a rifle in the other, surrounded by her comrades-in-arms as they walk over the dead bodies of their enemies.
One of the other classic symbols of the French is the Phrygian cap, also known as the red liberty cap. It is a knitted red (stocking) cap that has a peak on the top which allows the wearer to cant the cap in different directions depending on politics of a particular group of freedom loving patriots.
The red liberty cap perched on a “liberty pole” has been used by many countries to include the US. There are US coins with the image of the liberty cap on it. The official symbol of the US Army has a red liberty cap perched on a sword. There are many countries that have the red cap on their national flag. Iowa and other states have the red cap on their state seal. Our own very famous Statue of Liberty is a rendition of Marianne.
In this case she is holding a torch not a rifle, but it is France’s Marianne.
France is under attack once again along with “Christendom Europe” (what is left of it); all week the news has brought you blow-by-blow of the Muslim gunmen killing journalists and Jewish shopkeepers. There was hours of video footage, of the French police and the one thing I noticed in most of the “cop” coverage was they were carrying Ruger Mini 14 Rifles.
Not H&Ks or M-16s or any of the many fine European made self loading-rifles, Ruger rifles were the gun-of-the-hour in stopping the Islamic terrorists. Picture after picture of French police, military and security personal in their street battle gear accented prominently with a Ruger Mini 14.
Of course the average French citizen could not own one of these great life savers. Have you seen the video footage taken by citizens three stories up, filming down onto the Islamic terrorists? Instead of an I-phone, if only that person had had an I-gun. The worst shot in France could have taken the Islamic shooter out easily.
In the People’s Liberation world, the Russian AK 47 Kalashnikov battle rifle has been used since the early 1960s as a symbol of their alleged liberation. The AK 47 appears on numerous African and Muslin country’s national flags. The world knows the classic outline of an AK 47 rifle whether on a flag, a t-shirt or in film footage of yet another terrorist attack on the “West,” by the way this includes the attack on Paris this past week.
I would suggest it is time for a new symbol for the fight against Islamic terrorism, and it came directly from the killing fields of Paris and into every home in the world that was watching the Jihadists murdering, as it happened live on TV.
That new symbol would be the Ruger Mini 14 held in the outstretched hand of a modern “La Marianne” with the flag of any nation that finds its self standing in the pools of its citizens’ blood in the apparently never-ending battle with the destructive side of Islam. La Marianne and her Mini 14 should be the symbol, that the tipping point has arrived, and it is time for not only the police, military and any other official defensive group to act, but that the average citizen must also be ready and of course able (read 2nd amendment) to respond.
I do not know how the rest of the world treats its citizens and immigrants who follow the Islamic faith, but in the US the 2nd amendment works for all members of this nation.
If you happen to be an American whose grandparents were from the middle-east–I do not care. We are a nation of immigrants and that means anyone who arrives here legally has the same rights.
If you are an American of Islamic descent you are still an American citizen first as far as I am concern, exercise your 2nd amendment right, be prepared to defend yourself, your family and our Nation.
I would suggest things can and will get rather ugly in the near future. After a dirty bomb goes off in a major US city (and it will someday) there are people in the US who will not understand that almost all the American citizens of Muslim descent came to America originally to get away from what is happening in North Africa and the middle-east. I do not care if you pray on Christian Sundays, Jewish Saturdays or Muslim Fridays–we all have the same rights.
In fact I would suggest the liberal Jewish communities need to stop hoping the police will show up on time and start exercising their 2nd amendment right more often. You do not have a constitutional right for any public agency to come and save you from the evils of mother-nature or man. You have to be able to do much of the hard work yourself.
Again I strongly suggest the Ruger Mini 14 rifle should be the new symbol for freedom and for taking the fight to Islamic violence.
About Major Van Harl USAF Ret.: Major Van E. Harl USAF Ret., a career Police Officer in the U.S. Air Force was born in Burlington, Iowa, USA, in 1955. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Infantry School. A retired Colorado Ranger and currently is an Auxiliary Police Officer with the Cudahy PD in Milwaukee County, WI. His efforts now are directed at church campus safely and security training. He believes “evil hates organization.” vanharl@aol.com