“I Pledge To Be A Dumbshit”: Hillbilly Nation Takes Up New “Oath Keepers” Cause…Anything To Avoid Facing Down America’s Billionaire-Thieves
hongkong
United States
Group asks police and military to lay down arms in response to orders
deemed unlawful
Depending on your perspective, the Oath Keepers are either strident
defenders of liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia.
In the age of town halls, talk radio and tea parties, middle ground of
opinion is hard to find.
Launched in March by Las Vegan Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers bills
itself as a nonpartisan group of current and retired law enforcement
and military personnel who vow to fulfill their oaths to the
Constitution.
More specifically, the group's members, which number in the thousands,
pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives to
disarm the American people and to blockade American cities. By
refusing the latter order, the Oath Keepers hope to prevent cities
from becoming "giant concentration camps," a scenario the 44-year-old
Rhodes says he can envision happening in the coming years.
It's a Cold War-era nightmare vision with a major twist: The occupying
forces in this imagined future are American, not Soviet.
"The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever
happening here," Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper and Yale-trained
lawyer, said in an interview with the Review-Journal. "My focus is on
the guys with the guns, because they can't do it without them.
"We say if the American people decide it's time for a revolution,
we'll fight with you."
That type of rhetoric has caught the attention of groups that track
extremist activity in the United States.
In a July report titled "Return of the Militias," the Alabama-based
Southern Poverty Law Center singled out Oath Keepers as "a
particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival."
The Patriot movement, so named because its adherents believe the
federal government has stepped on the constitutional ideals of the
American Revolution, gained traction in the 1990s and has been closely
linked to anti-government militia and white supremacist movements.
The movement is blamed for spawning Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a
federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.
"I'm not accusing Stewart Rhodes or any member of his group of being
Timothy McVeigh or a future Timothy McVeigh," law center spokesman
Mark Potok said. "But these kinds of conspiracy theories are what
drive a small number of people to criminal violence. ... What's
troubling about Oath Keepers is the idea that men and women armed and
ordered to protect the public in this country are clearly being drawn
into a world of false conspiracy theory."
Oath Keepers got some unwanted attention in April when an Oklahoma man
loosely connected to the group was arrested for threatening violence
at an anti-tax protest in Oklahoma City. Rhodes called the man "a nut"
who had no real affiliation with his group.
Nonetheless, Potok's group now monitors Oath Keepers on its Web site
blog "Hatewatch."
Oath Keepers is not preaching violence or government overthrow, Rhodes
said. On the contrary, it is asking police and the military to lay
down their arms in response to unlawful orders.
The group's Web site, www.oathkeepers.org, features videos and
testimonials in which supporters compare President Barack Obama's
America to Adolf Hitler's Germany. They also liken Obama to England's
King George III during the American Revolution.
One member, in a videotaped speech at an event in Washington, D.C.,
calls Obama "the domestic enemy the Constitution is talking about."
According to the law center, militia groups are re-emerging in this
country partly as a result of racial animosity toward Obama.
It's the "cross-pollinating" of extremist groups -- some racist, some
not -- that is of concern, Potok said. As evidence that the danger is
real, he points to several recent murders committed by men with anti-
government or racist views.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reached a similar conclusion
in a report earlier this year about the rise of right-wing extremism.
The report said the nation's economic downturn and Obama's race are
"unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment."
The homeland security report added that "disgruntled military
veterans" might be vulnerable to recruitment by right-wing extremist
groups.
That warning was enough to make Rhodes feel paranoid.
"They're accusing anybody who opposes Obama of being a racist or a
potential terrorist," he said. "What they're saying is, 'We're coming
after you.'"
The motto of Oath Keepers: "Not on our watch!"
The message Rhodes hears from the government: We're watching you.
Las Vegas police Lt. Kevin McMahill said his department's homeland
security bureau isn't overly concerned with Oath Keepers at this
point, even though Rhodes says several active-duty Las Vegas officers
are members of the group.
"I wouldn't classify Oath Keepers as no threat at all, but I wouldn't
classify them as a threat either," McMahill said. "There's always a
chance an individual can step outside the boundaries of what an
organization stands for and do something wrong."
Rhodes, a former firearms instructor, said he easily could have
started Oath Keepers during the Bush administration, but his focus
during those years was first on getting his law degree and then
volunteering on the 2008 presidential campaign of Texas Congressman
Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican in whose office Rhodes worked
during the 1990s.
What Rhodes terms "the rise of executive privilege" during the
post-9/11 years of the Bush presidency will in his opinion only
accelerate with Obama in office. What's worse, he said, is that "gun-
hating extremists" now control the White House.
Two things have happened since the Homeland Security Department and
Southern Poverty Law Center released their reports on extremism:
Membership of Oath Keepers has spiked dramatically. And Rhodes has had
to do a lot of explaining.
"We're not a militia," he said. "And we're not part and parcel of the
white supremacist movement. I loathe white supremacists."
Oath Keepers doesn't offer paramilitary training; nor does it have a
military command structure. It instead has board members, which
include directors in seven states and outreach coordinators to
currently serving local and federal law enforcement and military
personnel. The group's state director in Montana, who goes by the name
Elias Alias, has said Montana and other states should consider
seceding from the United States in protest of the federal government's
conduct.
Leaders of the group will come together in Las Vegas starting Oct. 24
for the inaugural national conference of Oath Keepers.
Among the group's other leaders is Dave Freeman, an Army veteran and
former Las Vegas police sergeant who spent more than 30 years with the
Metropolitan Police Department.
For Freeman, Oath Keepers has become something of a family affair. He
recruited his niece, a former police chief, to serve as state director
for Oath Keepers in Massachusetts.
"When you believe in something, you have to do more than just pay it
lip service," said Freeman, the group's Southern Nevada director and
national peace officer liaison. "This is a crusade I believe in."
Another prominent Oath Keeper is former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack,
who has long been an outspoken government critic.
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Mack a "longtime militia hero"
who helped weaken gun control laws.
An incident earlier this year in rural Iowa, not inside the Washington
Beltway, motivated Rhodes to start Oath Keepers.
He questioned why the Iowa National Guard planned to use residents of
a small town to participate in training on door-to-door searches for
weapons.
The Guard said the training was to help soldiers who might be asked to
carry out similar searches in Iraq or Afghanistan.
But for Rhodes, it looked like preparation for a future declaration of
martial law. It reminded him of the response to Hurricane Katrina in
2005 when police officers reportedly confiscated legally owned
firearms. What the government called emergency response after the
levees broke, Rhodes saw as the imposition of martial law.
If it hadn't been for April 19 of this year, Oath Keepers might not
have gained the notoriety it now has.
On the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington Green, the Massachusetts
battle that started the American Revolution in 1775, a group of Oath
Keepers went to the battle site and reaffirmed their pledge to the
Constitution.
The gathering was mentioned in the Southern Poverty Law Center report
because April 19 is also the anniversary of the deadly end to the
federal siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993;
and of the retaliatory bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building
in 1995.
Rhodes and Potok have never talked, but if they did, they might find
themselves speaking a different language.
"Let them say what they want to say, but April 19 has very much become
a day for the extreme radical right," Potok said.
Rhodes couldn't disagree more.
"There are thousands of Americans who go to Lexington to watch re-
enactments of people shooting at troops," Rhodes said. "But if you're
a group of military and police there, they somehow find this
offensive."
Rhodes said he hopes Oath Keepers members think about the lawfulness
of day-to-day orders they receive.
For example, if a police officer feels he is being asked to do an
illegal search of a home or vehicle, he should stand down.
Rhodes eventually wants to create a legal defense fund for Oath
Keepers who are disciplined by their employers for defying orders they
deem unlawful or immoral.
"The message to law enforcement is not to become a tool of
oppression," he said.
Rhodes, a husband and father of five home-schooled children, said he
gets hundreds of e-mails a day, mostly from people interested in
knowing more about his group.
He also gets a lot of questions from "birthers" wanting to know if he
thinks Obama is really an American citizen and from "truthers" asking
whether he believes the attacks of 9/11 were an inside job. The group
doesn't have an official position on either issue, he said.
Some of his responses to questions have turned would-be allies against
him.
"I've been accused of being a traitor or a CIA operative because I'm
not coming out and declaring that the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine is a
biological weapon," he said.
elephty
quoted as saying that his first responsibility was to the President of the
United States. While such a statement may sound patriotic it is actually
a misinterpretation of a military leader's role with regard to government.
When soldiers are sworn into the military they repeat its mission statement
as part of the ceremony. "I will defend the Constitution from enemies both
foreign and domestic." When government officials and business leaders
create icons or devils out of normal human flesh, it is to elevate loyalty
to
particular men rather than to protect the principles of a democratic
republic.
Over the past few decades leaders in America have been deceptively
overthrowing the system of government envisioned by enlightened individuals
throughout history who sought universal principles grounded in due process
to protect the innocent and relieve citizens of feeling intimidated. The
equal
powers of each branch of government has the intent to protect the
individual from the will of the majority, (there are times when the majority
is
wrong,) and to preserve concepts such as the belief in the existence of
human dignity and the practice of mutual respect.
The government that we are observing devolve over the past three to four
decades is either a plutocracy or an oligarchy, not a democratic republic
that is based on mutual respect, voluntary service and maintain a high
regard for the evolution of liberal concepts intended to protect the
disadvantaged from the predatory, merciless, and relentless advantaged.
There are no super heroes in this life only those who pray on suckers who
believe people aspire to ideals created in the imagination of fantasy and
romance writers.
An Oath Keeper pledge I found uplifting was swearing that soldiers and
law enforcement officers will not fire upon fellow Americans, because an
order to do so would be unlawful. The reason for oath keeping can be
found in the paranoia of powerful individuals who believe that if Americans
become aware of the screwing they are taking, disguised as
patriotic behavior, they will be so pissed that oppression is necessary to
prevent a revolution; therefore, they prepare for a revolution that would
not
have to take place if there existed a moral or well-reasoned rustication for
their actions. Instead, more and more we a forced to accept their opinions
about reality rather than the direct experience of it.
"hongkong" <hongk...@uymail.com> wrote in message
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