Twenty years ago, the Michigan Militia was viewed
nationwide as a group of right-wing extremists harboring some kooky ideas based on
conspiracy theories.
Acting out their paranoia, they periodically went off into
the woods, dressed in camouflage, and practiced their firearms training,
preparing for the day when they would have to engage in armed conflict against
the government.
Twenty years later, the Michigan Militia mentality is
alive and thriving among some of the highest-ranking Republicans in the nation.
Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Jodi Ernst of Iowa and (to some extent) Rand Paul of
Kentucky make outward appeals to this fringe mentality that says government “tyranny”
must be answered with the barrel of a gun.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a likely presidential
candidate, recently mailed a direct appeal to survivalists who squirrel away
food rations in their basement or bunker.
A recent fundraising email
from Cruz said, “The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn’t for just
protecting hunting rights, and it’s not only to safeguard your right to target
practice. It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family,
your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against governmental
tyranny — for the protection of liberty.”
To his credit, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina,
another likely GOP contender for the White House, dismissed Cruz’s sales pitch
as a bit nutty. In an interview, Graham even invoked the Civil War while ridiculing
the idea of an armed insurrection. “Well, we tried that once in South
Carolina,” Graham said. “I wouldn’t go down that road again.”
Over at Salon, Simon Maloy dissects this strange GOP
embrace of far-right gun owners:
“This view of gun rights that casts personal firearm
ownership as a check on the abuses of government doesn’t make a great
deal of practical sense, and it betrays a lack of
faith in our democratic institutions. But it’s become increasingly
popular among high-level Republican officials who quite literally scare up
votes by telling voters they’re right to keep their Glocks cocked just in case
the feds come for them. Iowa’s new Republican senator Joni Ernst famously remarked
that she supports the right to carry firearms to defend against ‘the
government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.’
“The obvious question raised by statements like those
from Cruz and Ernst is: When does the shooting start? What is the minimum
threshold for government ‘tyranny’ that justifies an armed response from the
citizenry? In 2014, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy was ready to start a shooting
war with the feds to defend his illegal grazing practices, and he garnered the support
of top-level Republican officials (they only abandoned him after he started wondering
aloud whether black people would be better off as slaves).”
At a recent campaign event held at a New Hampshire gun
range, Politico reports that Cruz took credit for helping block any new laws in the aftermath of the
elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. He said many Senate Republicans
believed tough new laws were inevitable after the horrific shootings but he
engineered a way to defeat them.
The irony here is that the Texan speaks constantly in the name of liberty while at the same time boasts about thwarting the will of the people – the back ground checks expansion bill defeated in Congress in 2013 was supported by roughly 90 percent of the public.
The irony here is that the Texan speaks constantly in the name of liberty while at the same time boasts about thwarting the will of the people – the back ground checks expansion bill defeated in Congress in 2013 was supported by roughly 90 percent of the public.
MLive recently reported that the Michigan Militia, which lost
about 80 percent of its membership after all the negative publicity they
received following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, is still around and they are
waging a comeback.
The group still promotes self-defense training to protect
“the American way of life” against government intrusion. They emphasize
individual reliance, survivalist tactics and vigilant readiness in the event
armed resistance is needed to halt an overreach of a federal government
that is threatening Americans’ liberty.
That sounds a lot like an applause line that Cruz or
Huckabee would use at a campaign rally.
Yet, not too long ago that kind of talk signaled the type
of delusional paranoia that would end a politician’s career.
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Before I begin, let me make one thing clear: I believe in the rule of law. I would no more take up arms against the government than I would dispute an individuals’ right to vote.
ReplyDeleteHowever: this post borders on the philosophical, so I will wax philosophically.
While it seems impossible now to think that our nation would devolve to a point of armed insurrection against the government, world history has taught us again and again that the distance between a republic and a tyranny is never as far as people might think.
Whether it is the fall of the Roman Republic, the transition of Hitler from elected official to dictator, or the most recent rise and then crushing of freedom during the ‘Arab Spring’, the desire of those who exercise unchecked power to seek even greater power is the historical norm.
It has been said that ‘no single drop of water feels responsible for the flood’, and I think it can be equally argued that no single step away from freedom toward tyranny ever seems extreme; (though with historical perspective it becomes easy to see each step as a link in a long chain that moves from freedom to slavery).
To illustrate this point, consider the following thought experiment: go back in time to 1945 when World War 2 had just ended, and tell an American that the following things would be legally justified in the United States within the next 70 years:
Citizens wiretapped without warrant, citizens indefinitely held without charge, citizens prohibited from knowing the charges against them or having access to council, the torture and murder of citizens without due process, and many more such actions.
If you were to do that, the man would probably look at you, and then tell you to go back to Nazi Germany.
My point is this: while it is impossible (at this point) to see how The United States could ever devolve into a dictatorship, that’s not the same as saying that it’s impossible for it to happen. There’s just too much world history warning us.