The definition of an American patriot is in the eye of the beholden. Those of us who consider ourselves to be free as our natural rights under God and are willing to fight for this right are patriots. Those who consider themselves to be beholden to the federal government under a Socialist mandate call us extremists. If you do not know which side you are on, then you are one of the beholden:
If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
Sam Adams
Patriots have recognized the problems inherent in Socialism in the past but the wolves are at the door and the hinges (politicians) are being unglued. As I wrote about the consequences of one state standing up for the Constitutional requirements for qualified presidential candidates, what happens if one state stands up for freedom?
David DeGerolamo
A Gathering of Eagles: Extremists Look to Montana
For two years in the mid-1990s, Judge Greg Mohr carried a gun and wore a bulletproof vest while presiding over his tiny courtroom east of Kalispell. Members of the Montana Freemen, an armed group of racist extremists, were regularly appearing before him, and they didn’t mince words. Some of them later sentenced Mohr to death in their own pseudo-legal “common-law courts.”
Nearly two decades later, similar types of antigovernment stirrings are frequently being felt again across Montana, especially in this nearly all-white city in the northwest corner of the state. Far-right extremists are vowing that if a war with the federal government comes, their base will be in the mountains here.
Chuck Baldwin, a Baptist preacher who ran for president under the Constitution Party banner in 2008, moved 18 members of his family to Montana’s Flathead Valley last fall after receiving what he called a divine message telling him the state was the “tip of the spear” in the fight for liberty. Stewart Rhodes, a Yale-educated lawyer, former Army paratrooper and head of the conspiracy-minded Oath Keepers, also moved here. Rhodes is laying the groundwork for a new militia and is calling for citizens to adopt a barter economy to escape the bondage of U.S. currency. Neo-Nazi April Gaede, also a transplant to the state, has issued a call for white nationalists to “come home” to the Northwest.
These extremists and others came for different reasons, but they are having a cumulative effect. Law enforcement officers and courts have seen a surge of antigovernment activity by “sovereign citizens,” radicals who believe that most laws do not apply to them. Rooms at the Kalispell Public Library host regular screenings of racist films. Christian Identity adherents are papering neighborhoods with their message that whites are the true chosen people of the Bible and Jews are directly descended from Satan. And, once again, so-called “Preparedness Expos” are being held so shoppers can get ready for the imminent collapse of government.
