There's too little of the speech to judge it in proper context. The clip is too short.

What event is the video from? Seems to me he's addressing an audience that seems to understand, or at least be familiar with whatever it is he's talking about. He could be talking to the National Guard, for all we know. But, this is where misunderstandings are born. Take an out of context, seeming inflammatory statement and offer it up for evaluation. Seriously...what's the point?

Given that the 'average' intelligence quotient is 100 (give or take 10 points) all I know is that I want the opportunity to get my gun first!

Police, FBI, CIA, NSA, and any other non military law enforcement falls under this category.

He means that everyone needs to have a loaded gun in his/her house or have one on their hip when not at home. LOL And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you. Great toll income.... I don't really know what he means and I'm not sure he does either.

It's more bullsh*t political tripe meant to stir up emotons. "Civilian National Security Force"...Just what the f*ck does he call all our civilian law enforcement personnel? And what does he mean by it? National Security is, and always has been, a holistic approach. The military is only one aspect used for defense, offence, and power projection. They are mainly for matters OUTSIDE the U.S. Other organizaions outside the military exist as well to deal with matters of external and internal security and criminal activity. C.I.A, F.B.I, Federal Marshalls, State Police, Local Police, National Guard, and more. Our citizens are empowered to protect themselves as well, AND we work with law enforcement personnel to get it done. We are a nation of 300,000,000 people who have ready access to the full services of our government for our safety and defense. We use it all the time. H*ll, anybody remember the 2nd Amendment? "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." 'SECURITY OF A FREE STATE' written right there for us all to see. In the Constitution itself. Look it up yourself if you don't believe me. There are reasons for it, and this is one of them. And the cool thing about it is Uncle Sam doesn't have to shell out our tax dollars to buy and maintain our personal firearms. It's our RIGHT to have our own personal firearms. We just have to keep people from taking that right AWAY from us. We've already combined our many different agencies under one banner (remember the Department Homeland Security?) to make these agencies work together more efficiently. If his intent is to create a new agency, this is counter productive to that effort. Make what we have work. That's what it's there for. All this is well within the charters of all those organizations I mentioned. H*ll, what we have worked well through two World Wars, the Cold War, and a lot more. Maybe he wants this new Security Force to exert power over our own citizens? Now THERE is a frightening thought! Where have we seen this before, I wonder? He and his 'Civilian National Security Force' can suck the heat out of my *ss.

This short clip, from an American Independence Day speech earlier this year, sure sounds damning. It's been making the rounds on the internet, complete with assertions that it is proof that Obama is a fascist demagogue, a modern Hitler (complete with photoshopped Nazi propaganda posters) looking to create a secret paramilitary police force, and an out-of-control spender with another half trillion-dollar program to add to the budget all at once. In reality though, it's probably the best example I've ever seen of just how important it is to have CONTEXT. Video of the full speech is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df2p6867_pw with the clip in question being taken starting from 16m44s in. If you start it at 16m32s, though, the meaning changes completely. Ideally of course everyone should watch the entire speech if they want to judge it, but even just 10 extra seconds of context will show how much the words have been twisted by lack of context. Here's how it sounds with just that one extra sentence: "We're going to grow our foreign service, open consulates that have been shuttered, and double the size of the peace corps by 2011 to renew our diplomacy. We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded." Barack Obama is explaining his plan for national service, which is outlined on his website at http://www.barackobama.com/issues/service/. The "civilian national security force" refers to an expansion of existing publicly-funded programs (as well as a couple of news ones) such as the Peace Corps, in order to encourage the citizenry to become more civically involved, and in order to improve national security (read: foreign relations) by increasing diplomatic, non-military programs in America and around the world which better the image of America abroad, instead of focusing solely on military intervention which can sometimes breed suspicion and resentment even with the best of motives. Obama is not helped in this particular clip by the fact that he strayed from the prepared text (which is available at http://www.barackobama.com/2007/12/05/obama_issues_call_to_serve_vow.php and differs slightly from the content of the video) with an innocuous ad lib that could be twisted with some simple cropping of content. "Just as powerful and just as strong" now seems clear to mean just as effective and capable of improving American security through diplomacy as the military is martially; it doesn't mean a massive fascist gestapo equipped with guns and bombs and a mandate to silence dissent. And "just as well-funded" is clearly not meant to mean a dollar-for-dollar match to the half trillion-dollar National Defense Budget which supports an Armed Forces with between 2 and 3 million people in service to fight two wars, a monstrous R&D budget to develop the latest and greatest weaponry (plus a quarter-century-old missile defense systems of dubious efficacy). Rather, that these programs (whose members would number in the low hundreds of thousands, not the millions) be recognized as an integral part of American foreign and domestic policy and accorded the full backing of the government and enough money to fulfill their potential--instead of the current situation of neglect. In fact, Obama's plan, as laid out by his campaign at http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/NationalServicePlanFactSheet.pdf is proposing an operating budget of 3.5 billion dollars, which is less than 1% of the defense budget. So there you have the story. It may not be nearly as exciting to the tinfoil hat crowd or make such a big splash with the neoconservative bloggers, but hopefully it will enable a few worried people to relax, and remind themselves to always make sure you have the whole story.

vigilantes?

Just like socialist countries.Start out with innocent looking programs,and as time goes by,the next thing you know your children are walking around snitching off the neighbor for saying something about"The Saviour".

Here is the problem with senator Obama's context regarding his Colorado speech. While the promotion of civilian volunteer recruits seems & is admirable, the funding of governmental agencies to oversee the projects is a "DOUBLE EDGED" sword. Once a governmental agency is started it quickly becomes a beaurocracy. A beaurocracy MUST grow to substantiate itself. While this/other beaurocracy(s) may well be initiated on the best of intentions by senator Obama, the ramifications are obvious for all to see. This is manifested with ONLY one direction possible...INCREASED GOVERNMENT GROWTH & COST to the American taxpayer to fund yet more government beaurocracy.