Shoot First, Think Never

Most soldiers, he told me, don't talk openly about such things, but it's easy enough to tell which ones have been woken up. The Department of Defense, Sexton added, will be shocked by the number of service members willing to turn against their commanders when the time comes. . . .

Most of the men's gripes revolve around policies that began under President Bush but didn't scare them so much at the time. "Too many conservatives relied on Bush's character and didn't pay attention," founder Rhodes told me. "Only now, with Obama, do they worry and see what has been done. I trusted Bush to only go after the terrorists. But what do you think can happen down the road when they say, 'I think you are a threat to the nation?'"

Well, golly gee whiz! He can even articulate the very flaw in their thinking without being able to identify it for the contradiction it is. They claim they're all about defending the constitution, yet can't seem to figure out that the idea behind the constitution is about maintaining certain principles and truths that are way bigger than any individual or even group. Why the hell do you think liberals were so pissed off about what Bush was doing? It wasn't about him as a person, but because he was making decisions with far-reaching consequences to undermine our founding ideas, and we didn't want those laws changed whether it was Bush, Obama, or anyone else in power to abuse them. Remember how we cheered to hear Obama was reversing Bush's policies? That's because we wanted him to fix the damage that had been done by Bush to our constitutional rights. While you've spent all your energy fussing about whether the person in office has any "character" or not, we've remained focused on the bigger picture; And while you've been changing your allegiances willy-nilly with the latest election and economic turns, we've been thinking systematically about how to preserve and apply our basic beliefs across the system throughout all the different situations. Because, unlike you, we are able to extrapolate further into the future than the lengths of our dicks.

OK, rant done. That obviously wasn't just a reaction to this article, but to mounting frustration with this kind of thing. But this is an interesting article about another nutty group disconnected from anything beyond the tips of their noses, Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason.

There are scores of patriot groups, but what makes Oath Keepers unique is that its core membership consists of men and women in uniform, including soldiers, police, and veterans. At regular ceremonies in every state, members reaffirm their official oaths of service, pledging to protect the Constitution — but then they go a step further, vowing to disobey "unconstitutional" orders from what they view as an increasingly tyrannical government. . . .

He laid out 10 orders an Oath Keeper should not obey, including conducting warrantless searches, holding American citizens as enemy combatants or subjecting them to military tribunals (a true Oath Keeper would have refused to hold José Padilla in a military brig), imposing martial law, blockading US cities, forcing citizens into detention camps ("tyrannical governments eventually and invariably put people in camps"), and cooperating with foreign troops should the government ask them to intervene on US soil. In Rhodes' view, each individual Oath Keeper must determine where to draw the line. . . .

Now I know everyone has their issues and flaws and if you look closely enough at any group you'll find wackos, but it seems to me there's a not insignificant pattern here. Or maybe correlation would be a better word. There's seems to be an unusually high correlation between membership in groups like this and racist, violent, misogynistic assholes. Like the guy below who apparently remains a hero even though he raped a seven-year-old girl. I would think, if I were a somewhat mainstream conservative, I would not want to support groups like this and give these maniacs a forum to feed their hatreds. But there I go with my elitist rationality again.

IN VEGAS, Rhodes took me aside repeatedly to explain that many of those in attendance—including featured speakers like "Patriot Pastor" Garrett Lear ("When a government doesn't obey God, we must reform it")—might not represent Oath Keepers' official message. He and his Web staff have been overwhelmed, he told me, by the amount of policing required to keep people from posting "off message" commentary encouraging violence or racism. Last December, they shut down one forum because too many posters were using it to recruit for militias. . . .

Dyer, who with Rhodes' blessing represented Oath Keepers at an Oklahoma Tea Party rally on July 4, was charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with uttering "disloyal" statements. He ultimately beat the charge, left the Marines, and reappeared unmasked on YouTube encouraging viewers to join him at his makeshift training area in Duncan, Oklahoma—"I'm sure the DHS will call it a terrorist training camp." In January, Dyer was arrested on charges of raping a seven-year-old girl. When sheriff's deputies raided his home, they found a Colt M-203 grenade launcher believed to have been stolen from a California military base. He now faces federal weapons charges and is being hailed by fringe militia groups like the American Resistance Movement as "the first POW of the second American Revolution." . . .