The shock and horror through the patriot movement resulting from published papers in Missouri have been indescribable. For a movement so heavily represented and even led by active and ex-law enforcement/military people, to be painted in several broad strokes as terrorists is almost incomprehensible. This definition of "us and them" is one of the things we're here to break down at the community level and all the way up. And those who serve in uniform, they aren't "them", we ARE THEM. Those are our fathers and mothers, our brothers and our sisters and our cousins and our children and our nephews and nieces. THEY ARE US.
 
I had another piece wrote up about my anger at fancy-pants talking heads on 24-hour news networks about riots in the streets here in our beloved nation. My indignation rose to heights because by implication, that probably is supposed to mean us. It's either us or the leftists, and while it's well known the leftists can mobilize hundreds of thousands in the streets, they are equally well known for accomplishing nothing by same. Hey, we're the people that upon beholding the RNC and the fact that they really didn't want us there, we reclused ourselves ON THE OTHER SIDE OF A FREAKING RIVER to buffer ourselves from that madness.
 
That was our largest single mobilization to date. Before that it was
R3VOlUTION March in DC where we got along so well with law enforcement that it was practically a love-affair. They appreciated the way we picked up all our own trash and left West Lawn of Capitol Hill so clean you could hardly tell we were there. So yeah, we've dabbled in mass-mobilization, and found it kind of refreshing but we're not exactly in love with the idea. EndTheFed is the only street-level national initiative I'm aware of and that's an educational thing, a public outreach thing.
 
But naming Dr. Paul and Pastor Baldwin by name kind of hit below the belt and you have to understand one thing about a pastor: he probably sees himself as a Holy Man, bound by the law of God, which for a Christian means tolerance and forgiveness, but this person also sees themselves to be a shepherd of their flocks. And there's one thing that makes a shepherd a shepherd: they
defend their flocks. They respond to all threats both actual and possible. That's what they do. And knowing Pastor Baldwin to be a stand-up guy, I don't expect him to back down easy on this one.

And now, of course, the CFL has officially weighed in. We (CFL et al) just called the report authors out as university liberals. Them's our equivalent of fighting words right there. And because CFL is basically Dr. Paul to us, I don't expect any of us are gonna back down easy. The lines seem to be drawn. What we got here is an official Mexican Standoff. Somebody is gonna blink here and I hate to say it, but this time, if the idiots don't offer a retraction or apology (which would go a long way), what are we gonna do about it? Draw our shooting-tools and start firing randomly in all directions? Throw garbage in their front yards and spray-paint their dogs or something?

The part I really love about this whole thing is the authors acknowledge they took their information from publicly available online sources. WHICH MEANS THEY READ WHAT WE OURSELVES PUBLISH. Honestly, didn't the material in that report sound familiar to you? Although laughably topical, the report was at least somewhat accurate in terms of describing the movement.

As far as academic merritt, I near about fell out of my chair laughing at the colonial flags. Boy, these guys really had to dig deep to find the "Don't Tread On Me" image. Guys and gals, when you have 200+ years of revolutionary history, it's kind of hard to cover your tracks. They got us pinned. And some of those emblems, who ever saw any of those supposed "militia" emblems? Anybody you know sporting those patches? But of course, no write-up on "militia" activity is complete without a reference to Arizona's own "Viper Team". They are mythical even here in Arizona. I know people who sort of know people who knew them, but everybody here in the patriot movement just seems to consider them to have been a bunch of oddballs who really liked making things go bang out in the desert, which out here is pretty close to normal recreation.

There was this paper that got circulated here in Arizona law enforcement, this really cheap-looking xerox P.O.S. thats practically notorious now. It described people who "defended the Constitution" or something as potential terrorists and half the cops in Arizona were like "where did this P.O.S. come from?" It was repudiated almost instantly, but the thing continues to surface in OUR profiles of THEIR perception of us. We don't even talk about it much here in Arizona anymore and nobody talks about the "Viper Team". Both are considered anomalies.

So here we are, the depression hasn't even really kicked in yet and we already got a fight on our hands. I understand everybody's position, everybody is gonna hold their position and nothings gonna get accomplished but hurt feelings.

There's another role in this here dance and it comes from Native America. There's such a thing as a "Peace Chief" and it's his role to try and create peace no matter what it takes, and he says "if this peace does not hold, I will bear the cost" which pretty much means if it doesn't work, you will be looking for a new peace chief pretty soon. Not a very popular role in hostile times and I ain't looking to get burned on a dang bonfire if this doesn't work out but I want peace on this one.

Patriots, I want you to back down. Pastors, it's time to turn the other cheek and minister to forgiveness and tolerance and forbearance. We know how strong we are. We should consider our dignity to be very nearly above a response in this matter. And let's not fail to appreciate the humor in this matter. Let's encourage these fine authors with such salacious facts as "persons who eat meat-loaf and mashed potatoes are likely to be patriots" and "patriots often line-dry their clothing instead of tumble-drying like normal people". Let's take it a step further and market ourselves and say "if you are eating a really fine beef-stake tomato in season, it probably comes from a patiot". How about tag-lines like "the taste that's too good to incarcerate" or the direct approach of "who's gonna change your tire?"

What we should really do is see if we can score the contract to write this stuff ourselves. We'll be way more accurate, in-depth and instead of showing them the covers of our popular DVDs, we'll send them actual copies so they can watch them full-length. We'll make a handy amount of cash and have better educated law enforcers. Everybody wins.

Come on folks, we've been insulted and laughed at for 200+ years. They laughed at us the first time and they are laughing at us now. Intellectually, we clearly have the last laugh here. If we want it.

I know we can do it. We're gonna allow ourselves to get all offended by these morons? I was personally pretty mad about the whole thing, but I repent of it. Now, because of the leveling process in our socialized academic institutions which renders the authors incapable of anything more than "book reporting", instead of giving them the F they deserve, I want to put a little star on their forehead and a ribbon around their wrist and let them be stars of today's "everybody is special" pagent.

See, and now I got the ego thing kicking in. It's really difficult not to feel superior in these circumstances. We have met the enemy, and they have the intellectual capacity of gnats. Is this the fascist police state or is this the Keystone Cops? People, if this is what we're afraid of, we really don't have much to be afraid of atall. The authors of this report are probably pot-smoking hippies that haven't even got out of bed yet.