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Besides being wrong, the argument that the
Constitution is “dead” is stultifying and defeatist. Stultifying,
because it diverts the energies of the most active patriots into a wholly
unproductive exercise—the only effective resistance to unconstitutional
“government” being, not private action, but the unflagging
defense of constitutional government by the people themselves. Defeatist,
because, by eschewing constitutional means to oppose unconstitutional
“government,” it concedes that some form of unconstitutional
“government” will prevail, no matter who “wins” in
the end.
In
addition, the argument that the Constitution is “dead” encourages
and further empowers America’s oppressors. On what legal basis can
these villains be opposed, except that their conduct is unconstitutional? How
will they be deterred from even worse wrongdoing in the future, if the
Constitution provides no punishment today for the wicked deeds they have
already committed? And without deterrence, what new horrors will they
perpetrate tomorrow under color of some “emergency powers” they
invent to rationalize their crimes?
Finally,
by encouraging and empowering the Forces of Darkness in their misrule, the
argument that the Constitution is “dead” accelerates the approach
of a major economic and political crisis. This may be what some of the
advocates of private “militias” imagine will be useful, on the
theory that, when a massive crisis does strike, common Americans will finally
wake up to what has happened and why. Maybe that will be the general reaction.
But what good will it do for Americans to wake up, if at the same time they
find themselves utterly unprepared to take effective action? All they will
know is that they have lost, and that they can do nothing about it!
2.
Proposals for private “militia” of this first type are less than
helpful, not only because they are inherently ineffective, but also because,
when their ineffectiveness becomes apparent, it may goad frustrated people
into joining other types of private “militias” which are
positively dangerous. This second form of misdirection also suffers from the
inescapable defect that private “militias” of any variety can
assert no color of legal authority for their specifically
“militia”-related activities. However, unlike proposals which at
least have the merit that the private “militias” they advocate
are not inherently unlawful organizations, the second approach argues for
private “militias” the very purpose of which is to prepare their
members to engage in patently illegal activities.
These
private “militias” are not to be strictly defensive
organizations. Quite the contrary, they are intended to be offensive and
aggressive. The scheme posits “militia” units the members of
which agree—perhaps even bind themselves by oaths—to oppose by
any effective means those people whom they condemn as “traitors.”
Peacefully, if possible; but violently, if they deem it necessary. They will
organize, arm, and train themselves as guerrilleros, more or less openly, in
apparent compliance with local laws in the States that allow such private
paramilitary activities for peaceful purposes. But, when a particular day for
action arrives, some members of these “militia” units, on their
own initiatives, will take violent action against perceived “traitors.”
The rest of the units will do nothing, although they will be aware of the
plan for some of them to act. Thus, on one day some of these
“militiamen” may conduct an operation against one target, on
another day others of them may strike another target, and so on.
These
operations will be random, adventitious, decentralized, and
uncoordinated—except that they will all radiate from the various
“militia” units. The individuals carrying them out will be
subject to no single, hierarchical chain of command or structure of leadership.
Rather, they will answer only to themselves—except that they will
imagine that their authority somehow derives from the “militia”
units of which they are members; and in fact they will be at least tacitly
supported by the others in those units. And inasmuch as this proposal
presumes that “the government” cannot be actually overthrown by
such minuscule “hit-and-run” operations (because the plan makes
no provision for coalescing the “militia” units into suitably large
and properly directed forces), these activities will continue to harass and
punish “the government” and its supporters endlessly, in a
“perpetual revolution.”
Obviously,
under a scheme of this type, the private “militias” will
function—and, more importantly, will be understood and intended by all
their members to function—as locations and mechanisms to recruit,
organize, indoctrinate, train, and deploy clandestine “cells” or
(perhaps more descriptively) “wolf-packs” of self-authorized,
self-activated, self-directed outlaws, who will form up, strike, then
disperse and dissolve into their component individuals, perhaps never having
the same composition in any two instances.
Even
if such operations could ever prove legitimate in a guerrilla conflict in
some gloomy future scenario drawn from Orwell’s 1984, they are
completely out of place for reasserting constitutional self-government in
this country here and now. Indeed, such proposals constitute a perfect
formula for discrediting all “militias” as criminal conspiracies
by designing some of them actually to operate as criminal conspiracies.
If
an individual joins a group, for the purpose of training all the members of
the group, and is aware that some members of the group, using their training,
will engage in acts of illegal violence, and that to encourage, prepare for,
and perpetrate such acts is the ultimate purpose of the group—then that
individual as well as every other member of the group will be equally
culpable for each and every one of the illegal acts committed by any member
of the group. In such a group, therefore, every member will be held hostage:
(i) to the acts of the most irresponsible, demented, or otherwise dangerous
individual in the group; and (ii) to enticement, entrapment, and other
schemes of agents provocateurs from rogue governmental agencies and malicious
private organizations that ensnare any member of the group. For example, if
but one member of such a private “militia” (on his own or through
entrapment) converted a semi-automatic firearm into an unregistered machine
gun or submachine gun; obtained grenades or similar munitions; or
manufactured bombs, Molotov cocktails, or other explosives or incendiaries as
the preliminary step to some act of violence directed (say) against a public
official—then the whole group could be charged as a criminal conspiracy
(such as some variety of criminal syndicalism), or even as a
“terrorist” organization.
That
being so, forming private “militias” of this sort would obviously
be a most efficacious way to identify, inculpate, and eventually incarcerate
patriots whose enthusiasm for freedom exceeded their prudence and respect for
law. This is so obvious that no responsible American should ever consider
participating in such an organization. For, not only would any individual who
joined such a group transform himself into an outlaw, but also his
participation would help to blacken the militia movement and discredit the
militia idea, to alienate the rest of the citizenry, and to rationalize police-state
suppression of every kind of private concerted activity involving firearms.
A
scheme such as that explained above can be the product only of people who are
either breathtakingly irresponsible and ignorant individuals—or
transparent agents provocateurs. The latter possibility is not unlikely,
because the whole business exhibits the familiar characteristics of rogue
intelligence-agency “black operations”: namely,
- urging Americans to engage in active resistance
against “traitors” in “the government”;
- organizing the most highly motivated patriots
into discreet groups subject to infiltration, surveillance, and
incitement;
- inveigling them into violent illegal activity;
then
- imposing overwhelming force to strike them down
as “outlaws”; and thereafter
- using their example to demonize and destroy
every other manifestation of even lawful opposition to usurpation and
tyranny.
Even
if the people who advocate schemes for such werewolfish private
“militias” are not agents provocateurs—even if somehow they
are acting in good faith, albeit with atrocious judgment—any
responsible American must categorically oppose what they propose. As far as I
am concerned, no one who advances such an idea (or sympathizes with it, for
that matter) is qualified, or should be allowed, under any circumstances, to
join one of the Citizens’ Homeland Security Associations that I have
advocated in my book Constitutional “Homeland Security,” Volume
One, The Nation in Arms.
Edwin
Vieira
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