Set em’ up and knock em’ down!

I have really got to ask the Southern Poverty Law Center something?  Who is this list supposed to scare, anyway?

Ya’ll know what I’m talking about, right?  Your scathing six page report entitled: ‘Meet the Patriots’—I mean, come on, even the title of this thing is a joke.  You know that all of those geriatric grandmothers, whom you hit up for donations each year, are going to confuse this with the sequel to that Ben Stiller movie, don’t you? 

Forgive my sarcasm, but I just can’t help but rub your nose in it.  You have seriously gone off the deep end with this one.  Even you must have had a hard time keeping a straight face when you put this thing together. 

Here’s a tip: If you’re going to compile a compendium of frightening, right-wing extremists who pose a serious threat to national security, you’d better have some frightening, right-wing extremists to use as examples.  Wheres the evidence of this terrifying militia movement that you say is spreading like wildfire across America?  Do you mean to tell me that you couldn’t come up with even one real life ‘Patriot’ posing the kinds of exaggerated threats that you’ve been propagating to your semi-captive audience of police professionals?  I would have at least expected to find someone like this among your cast of villains:

'The Terror From Tucson'
Klauss Bruenner, 29

Klauss is an Iraq War Veteran who served in the Special Forces.  There, he became sympathetic with Al-Qaeda and actually played chess with Osama Bin Laden.  Upon returning from duty, he and several hundred of his ‘Patriots’ migrated to the Arizona Desert and built an impenetrable underground fortress.  From there, he and his army launched a killing spree, slaughtering dozens of illegal aliens with flamethrowers and grenade launchers.  He and his gang have also murdered four police officers during a robbery at a Burger King in Tempe.  He’s still at large, but sources say he’s on his way to Atlanta to attend a Tea Party function hosted by Sarah Palin. 

Couldn’t find anyone like that, huh?  Right!  That’s because they don’t exist.  No one like that exists.  And if they did, they wouldn’t be accepted into the “real” Patriot movement—and you know it! 

So instead of radical domestic terrorists, we find people like this among your cast of villains:
 

'Needle of Estrogen’
Catherine Bleish, 26

Catherine Bleish, one of the few female leaders in the resurgent Patriot movement, runs the Liberty Restoration Project and has become a popular speaker on the Patriot circuit.    "It's quite frightening the amount of power and authority that our government has assumed for themselves," Bleish told the Intelligence Report. "They say, 'We are the Supreme Being, we have the guns, we are going to do it our way.'"  Bleish, of St. Louis, Mo., speaks passionately about the anger that's fueling the movement. "It's so hard to start a small business, and once you start one, it's hard to keep it open. My parents are being audited for the past six years, while [Treasury Secretary] Tim Geithner, who doesn't pay his taxes, now gets to oversee the IRS," she said. "People are losing their homes. People are losing their jobs. People are frustrated and looking for answers."  

My, God!  Lock this woman up!  Or how about this evildoer:  

'Bulldozer vs. Bulldozer'
Martin "Red" Beckman, 80  

In 1984, when Martin J. "Red" Beckman ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in New Hampshire's famously wide-open primary, he billed himself as "Montana's fighting redhead." By that time, he had been battling the IRS for 10 years.   Sometimes called the "Father of the Patriot Movement," Beckman gained a measure of fame within the anti-tax militia movement for refusing to pay more than $100,000 in income taxes and $34,000 in property taxes, contending that U.S. tax laws are illegal.  

I guess the moniker of ‘Bulldozer’ is supposed to strike fear in the minds of police as they keep on the look out for this Wiley, 80 year old madman. 

Over half of the ‘Patriots’ you list in your report are senior citizens, some with serious health problems.  The others are bloggers, columnists, filmmakers and radio talk show hosts.  Not quite the ensemble of violent, radical, militarized miscreants we were expecting.  That tells me one thing: You don’t consider any of these people on your list as a physical threat.  However, you do consider them to be an intellectual threat.  All of these people are engaged in the process of disseminating information that you don’t want the American people to know.  That’s the threat…and that’s the only threat.  

Let’s get serious, folks.  It’s a sad day in America when the word ‘Patriot’ is used as a derogatory slur.  The last time this happened was during the American Revolution when the British Crown considered Patriots to be seditious, rebellious criminals.  Today that same connotation has made its resurgence among certain leftist organizations, the media and even among elements within the United States government.  One might argue that the Patriots of old had it easy compared to their modern day counterparts.  In addition to being characterized as seditious, rebellious criminals, today’s Patriots find themselves defending against accusations of racism, xenophobia, links to international terrorist organizations and other rhetoric designed to demonize them in the minds of the American people.  

A recent Southern Poverty Law Center publication entitled  ‘Meet the Patriots’ as well as documents like the now notorious MIAC report have all been used to propagate these myths.  Those of us who know better could easily dismiss such blather.  Unfortunately, these fictions are being disseminated to law enforcement agencies disguised as fact.  This shouldn’t be taken lightly. 

Today’s law enforcement is being indoctrinated to carry out political missions on behalf of powerful and wealthy special interests.  This is dangerous, not only for the peaceful activist who is being unjustly stereotyped, but also for the nation as a whole.  Misleading our police, and sending them on wild goose chases, not only exhausts their resources but also diverts their attention away from real, tangible threats.

In its November, 2000 issue, Harper’s Magazine ran an article by Ken Silverstein entitled ‘The Church of Morris Dees.’  In that article he writes “The Ku Klux Klan, the SPLC's most lucrative nemesis, has shrunk from 4 million members in the 1920s to an estimated 2,000 today, as many as 10 percent of whom are thought to be FBI informants. 

But news of a declining Klan does not make for inclining donations to Morris Dees and Co., which is why the SPLC honors nearly every nationally covered "hate crime" with direct-mail alarums full of nightmarish invocations of "armed Klan paramilitary forces" and "violent neo-Nazi extremists," and why Dees does legal battle almost exclusively with mediagenic villains-like Idaho's arch-Aryan Richard Butler-eager to show off their swastikas for the news cameras.”

Later in the article, Silverstein writes “The SPLC's "other important work justice" consists mainly in spying on private citizens who belong to "hate groups," sharing its files with law-enforcement agencies, and suing the most prominent of these groups for crimes committed independently by their members-a practice that, however seemingly justified, should give civil libertarians pause.”

It should come as no surprise then why the SPLC has chosen to target the Patriot movement.  The Patriot movement is seen as a big, fat milk cow ready to take the place of the dwindling, increasingly irrelevant white supremacist organizations that they have nearly sued out of existence.  As the article above relates, the SPLC sues groups for crimes committed independently by their members.  Now you’ll understand why we constantly find groups being infiltrated by provocateurs.  Just one rogue individual led astray and coaxed into illegal activity by one of these moles could be enough to destroy and bankrupt an entire group and all of it’s members.  Does the name Hutaree come to mind?  Hal Turner, anyone?  

Characterizing, or lumping Patriots in with violent white supremacists has a duel effect in the SPLC’s fund raising campaigns.  Even a Liberal journalist like Alexander Cockburn has accused the SPLC of "frightening elderly liberals that the heirs of Adolf Hitler are about to march down Main Street."

They may be able to fool little old ladies, but I’m confident (perhaps wishful thinking) that our police will see through this latest rouse by the SPLC.  Skinheads, white supremacists and neo-Nazis are one thing, but when police are told to be on the look out for constitutionalists, Christians, 2^nd amendment advocates and returning veterans, they’re pretty much describing most police officers—and that doesn’t fly.  I know this from personal experience.  But if you want a window into the mind of most police, I would invite you to visit some of the more prominent police forums.  There you will find an overwhelming majority of officers who are opposed to Barrack Obama, Janet Napolitano, health care legislation, Wall Street bail-outs and other issues that the SPLC would have you believe are indicative of right wing radicalism.  Hell, I even saw a few avatars sporting the Obama-Joker motif.

But of course there are those (mostly young recruits) who are eager to follow any order no matter how ridiculous, and are too naďve to realize that they are being used to enforce a political agenda.  These are the boys (and girls) you see with their trembling hand clutched to their 9mm as they cautiously approach the passenger’s side window of an elderly woman’s Buick simply because she had a ‘Chuck Baldwin’ sticker on her bumper.

And there are still other examples of police who ought to know better or who may have simply lost their moral compass. 

In 2001, months prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center, a FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) representative addressed a group of local Oklahoma police officers in a classroom setting and asked them “Who was the first terrorist organization in the United States?” 

Several of those in the room responded with “The Founding Fathers.” 

“The Founding Fathers?  You mean, Thomas Jefferson?  You mean, George Washington?  You mean, Paul Revere?”

“Oh, yes!…Oh, yes!…Oh, yes!” was the reply from the officers as each name was called out.

The FEMA representative went on to characterize the founders as violent extremists, terrorists and assassins and went on to say “The guys we call our Founding Fathers—George Washington, Mr. Honest who cut down the cherry tree—is the same guy who signed death warrants of the British government, of the British Crown, who they wanted to eliminate because they had influence in certain pockets of the United States (at that time the 13 colonies) and they wanted to divide and conquer.”

Yeah, well, when you read things like that you start to wonder if maybe it is wishful thinking to assume that our police are going to come around and do the right thing.  But we have to think that way, because the alternative is just too frightening to imagine.  Let's all just hope that George Orwell was wrong when he said:    

 “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”

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