The Liberty Tree Lantern

Group asks police and military to lay down arms in response to orders deemed unlawful

By ALAN MAIMON
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

(With comments by The Liberty Tree Lantern in blue)

Depending on your perspective, the Oath Keepers are either strident defenders of liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia.

In the age of town halls, talk radio and tea parties, middle ground of opinion is hard to find.

Launched in March by Las Vegan Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers bills itself as a nonpartisan group of current and retired law enforcement and military personnel who vow to fulfill their oaths to the Constitution.

More specifically, the group’s members, who number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives to disarm the American people and to blockade American cities. By refusing the latter order, the Oath Keepers hope to prevent cities from becoming “giant concentration camps,” a scenario the 44-year-old Rhodes says he can envision happening in the coming years.

It’s a Cold War-era nightmare vision with a major twist: The occupying forces in this imagined future are American, not Soviet.

“The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here,” Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer, said in an interview with the Review-Journal. “My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can’t do it without them.

“We say if the American people decide it’s time for a revolution, we’ll fight with you.”

That type of rhetoric has caught the attention of groups that track extremist activity in the United States.  (Groups like those of King George III did in the 1770s? Or, like the Gestapo of the 1930s, or like the Secret Police of the KGB? When they shot and killed anybody who believed in freedom or liberty.  Oh,,, but no similarity here what-so-ever.  RIGHT!)

In a July report titled “Return of the Militias,” the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center singled out Oath Keepers as “a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival.”  (Patriots who desire to protect our ‘individual’ unalienable rights and authority that we were given by God and as written into our laws in the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States of America are bad?  And your point is? ? ? ?)

The Patriot movement, so named because its adherents believe the federal government has stepped on the constitutional ideals of the American Revolution, gained traction in the 1990s and has been closely linked to anti-government militia and white supremacist movements. 

• Has the federal government disobeyed our laws that we wrote in The Constitution of the United States of America? 
• What do moral virtuous people generally do with scofflaws? 
• Anyone who considers listening to or giving any credence to the “three” people in the Freedom movement who are white supremacists are as crazy as the white supremacists and ought to be put “away” for the best interests and safety of the American public.

The movement is blamed for spawning Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

• The bombing of a Federal Building, to restore Constitutional law is utterly stupid. 
• No “Freedom Movement” group of any size or sense would ever do this. 
• The real question is would the U.S. Government move to stop the ENFORCEMENT of Constitutional Law as it WAS intended in spirit and intent, word for word, by our founding fathers by way of Martial Law
• or confiscation of firearms that are protected by The Constitution itself for the very purpose of ENFORCEMENT of those laws as a LAST resort by We The People who wrote, established and ordained them, by our authority bestowed upon us individually by God, in the first place?

“I’m not accusing Stewart Rhodes or any member of his group of being Timothy McVeigh or a future Timothy McVeigh,” law center spokesman Mark Potok said. “But these kinds of conspiracy theories are what drive a small number of people to criminal violence. … What’s troubling about Oath Keepers is the idea that men and women armed and ordered to protect the public in this country are clearly being drawn into a world of false conspiracy theory.”

• And who, may I ask, is protecting “the public”?   The U.S. Government who has been thwarting Constitutional LAWS for nearly ten decades and has since been incrementally robbing us of our individual liberty, prosperity and property in the form of taxation that has been literally destroying our economy for decades like millions of leaches and misquotes sucking blood out of our economy and from our families, to the point neither father or mother is left to raise our own children?
• Is a Government who is leaching so much out of our economy that the public debt, that soon must be paid, that, over the infinite horizon is in the HUNDREDS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS, not harming the American public more than the “patriots” who seek to protect our economy, our personal wealth, property and the individual freedom and liberty which created it?
• Is the Government that usurped our authority as We The People who wrote The Constitution and its laws on THEM, that according to Article 1 Section 8 only Congress is To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures, protecting us, when they unlawfully through utter Constitutional CONTEMPT gave this authority to the owners of the cartel of twelve privately owned banks called The Federal Reserve “System”?
• Is the U.S. Government protecting us when, through THE FEDERAL RESERVE “SYSTEM” they have created a real “MATRIX”, where money is NOTHING more than paper and ink, printed by the TRILLIONS and TRILLIONS out of thin air to the point that our entire economy is based on NOTHING but these little pieces of paper and ink?  Paper and ink that are nothing more than FEDERAL RESERVE “NOTES” as printed right on them, meaning that they are all I.O.U.s that promise to pay with “real” money in the future; in this case a future that will never arrive?  When, Federal Government and FEDERAL RESERVE “SYSTEM” are you going to pay us with the REAL MONEY to replace the Federal Reserve NOTES we have in our wallets and in our bank accounts?  When are we going to be paid with REAL, honest to God, money?
• In the last quarter of 2008 America almost had a system wide total banking collapse / failure.  This was solely the result of the U.S. Government not obeying the LAWs in Article 1 Section 8 as further enforced by the ninth and tenth Amendments in The Bill of Rights.  The printing of more FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES, that ultimately was the creation of “The Matrix” (our economy that only exists in our minds, as it is based on Dollars that we think are worth 100 cents when in reality they are worth 4 cents now 2 – 3 cents due to TARP, Corporate Bailouts, Giant Bank Bailouts, pork barrel politics, Socialist / Communist program “free stuff” in 2009 and before) is only going to make the collapse of “The MATRIX” far worse.  Do you call that protecting “the public”?

 

Oath Keepers got some unwanted attention in April when an Oklahoma man loosely connected to the group was arrested for threatening violence at an anti-tax protest in Oklahoma City. Rhodes called the man “a nut” who had no real affiliation with his group.

• “How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!”  -  Samuel Adams.  Do you see people how the Tories pervert words and events to support Socialism , Communism, Fascism and “hate” of anything to do with freedom?

Nonetheless, Potok’s group now monitors Oath Keepers on its Web site blog “Hatewatch.”

• The “hate” of the dark side of Socialism and Communism have MURDERED in Cold Blood well over ONE HUNDRED MILLION innocent people.  See: HOW MANY DID COMMUNIST / SOCIALIST REGIMES MURDER? 
• Is the U.S. Government’s sure and steady march to Socialism and Communism, such as Universal Health Care, protecting the American public?
• Social Security and Medicare Alone are $99 TRILLION DOLLARS in UNFUNDED liabilities, over the infinite horizon.  Is this how the U.S. Government protects Americans?  Where the hell is that money going to come from in the next two or three years?  These two programs alone will destroy our economy, which is based on the fact that our minds have been programmed to believe that the dollar is worth 100 cents when in reality it is only worth 2 or three and threaten to take away everything we and our children and our children’s grandchildren will ever have.  This is the economic debilitating facts of Socialism (otherwise known as Government “free stuff”) throughout history.  How come you didn’t learn that in public school?  Perhaps, do you suppose, it is because the U.S. Government set the curriculum?  Do ya think?
• Throughout ALL OF HISTORY of planet Earth, Government “free stuff” has been so expensive to “the public” that EVERY SINGLE ONE of those societies self destructed!
• I ask you folks, who is out to protect the American Public, the Patriots and whatever Militia we Americans have supporting American LAW or all three branches of the U.S. Government who are tearing it apart?

Oath Keepers is not preaching violence or government overthrow, Rhodes said. On the contrary, it is asking police and the military to lay down their arms in response to unlawful orders.

• “When” the U.S. Government has pushed their Constitutional contempt and lawless behavior to the point, in less than three years time, that the entire MATRIX (Our economy based on Monopoly money) collapses, like it almost did in 2008 wouldn’t it be nice to have freedom and liberty again to produce the individual wealth and prosperity that the average common workingman did pre-1913?
• Wouldn’t it be great if when The MATRIX collapses we wouldn’t have to have a Re-Revolutionary War, the active armed forces and police just lay down their weapons and allow “the People” to reconstitute the FULL POWER and EFFECT of LAW as written in The Constitution upon our Government, so that these NEVER happens again?

The group’s Web site, www.oathkeepers.org, features videos and testimonials in which supporters compare President Barack Obama’s America to Adolf Hitler’s Germany. They also liken Obama to England’s King George III during the American Revolution.

• You mean to tell me that the Oath Keepers have minds of their own which are not totally controlled by either House of Congress or the Administration?  You mean to tell me that the Oath Keepers are allowed to think logical thoughts?  You mean to tell me that Oath Keepers are allowed to read the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution and keep the Oath that they made to America and especially our God.  Oh, my God!  Heaven forbid!  Call out the National Guard!  Oh yeah, they are the National Guard.
• Just think how horrible it would be if every member of the armed forces fought for the cause of freedom and liberty and even our individual unalienable rights? Can you imagine the horror?
• Actually to be honest, all of us have to realize that for us to get back our freedom we have to let the MATRIX completely collapse.  The MATRIX is how they control us.  We have to, unfortunately, let our economy collapse entirely or step it down, and rebuild it based on COMPLETE Constitutional LAW word for word, so that the vast majority of the common average American families can become wealthy, through very hard work, once again.  The nice thing is, with true freedom it won’t take very long.  Can you imagine how fast our economy will grow when almost everything we earn is ours to keep and spend the way we decide?  Think of the Trillions and Trillions that will be kept in our hands and in our economy.  It is almost too much to imagine as to how wonderful and wealthy we will all be after the five or so years of blessed hardship we will soon face resulting in prosperity for most everyone who isn’t lazy or just plain unlucky.

One member, in a videotaped speech at an event in Washington, D.C., calls Obama “the domestic enemy the Constitution is talking about.”

• Well,,,  Ah Duh!  Imagine thinking that?  What would ever give anybody a thought like that?  I mean it isn’t like Obama picked people like: Van Jones and Anita Dunn who are major Socialists / Communists as admitted in their own words.

According to the law center, militia groups are re-emerging in this country partly as a result of racial animosity toward Obama.

• Yeah, Right…  This is so ridiculous it doesn’t even make for a good joke.  The last thing the folks who believe in “true” freedom are is racist.  To say otherwise just shows the idiocy and ignorance of those saying it.

It’s the “cross-pollinating” of extremist groups — some racist, some not — that is of concern, Potok said. As evidence that the danger is real, he points to several recent murders committed by men with anti-government or racist views.

• I do not know about these “recent” murders but I do know about HOW MANY DID COMMUNIST / SOCIALIST REGIMES MURDER?

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reached a similar conclusion in a report earlier this year about the rise of right-wing extremism. The report said the nation’s economic downturn and Obama’s race are “unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment.”

• So let me get this straight; it is considered a very bad thing to believe in freedom and liberty? People becoming concerned about their country turning toward Socialism, Communism and/or Fascism is a very bad thing?  People gathering and talking to stop the mounting and very costly U.S. Government tyranny and oppression enforced march toward Socialism, Communism and/or Fascism is a very bad thing?  Is that the point the above U.S. Government line is making?  You have got to be kidding me!  How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words! – Samuel Adams
• Speak of being a racist look at this: Obama Documented His Own Racist Hatred of The White Race in Books and this was written by Obama himself for crying out loud!

The homeland security report added that “disgruntled military veterans” might be vulnerable to recruitment by right-wing extremist groups.

• The members of The U.S. Military might be vulnerable to fighting for freedom, liberty, rights, and protecting The Constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic.  Oh God forbid!  Can you imagine how terrible that is?

That warning was enough to make Rhodes feel paranoid.

• These sorts of oppressive despotic behaviors of The U.S. Government would make anyone feel paranoid.  Be prepared to see the three guys with suits and dark sunglasses and concealed weapons who look like the Agents of The Matrix knocking on your door Mr. Rhodes.  They will be IRS agents to perform an audit to make an example and a lesson out of you.  But the vast majority of America will be with you, Sir!

“They’re accusing anybody who opposes Obama of being a racist or a potential terrorist,” he said. “What they’re saying is, ‘We’re coming after you.’”

• I doubt that they will be just “saying” that, to any of us, for long.  Soon, I believe, they will be coming after us. That is the way of Socialism.  Ask Germany, Russia, Italy and China. Look how Washington is a War to shut down Fox TV NEWS programs.  Look at how they are trying to shut down bloggers through so-called “Net Neutrality”: Washington To Close Internet To Bloggers, End Open Internet Freedom  Heck ya they’re coming after us.

The motto of Oath Keepers: “Not on our watch!”

• God bless you, Oath Keepers!  Thank You and you will not be alone should the U.S. Government take this where they demonstrate they are going by hiring people like Communists Van Jones and Anita Dunn the mass murdering Communist Mao Tse Tung lover who she turns to most.

The message Rhodes hears from the government: We’re watching you.

• Yeah, LITERALLY, in Real-Time. Thousands of Americans might be RIGHT NOW and certainly will be tracked and spied on through RFID tags that have been sewn into our clothing and shoes by manufacturers and tracked through 50% of American cell phones that are RFID scanner enabled, which transmits all sorts of location and ID data through the 3G and 4G networks ubiquitously throughout America and a lot of the world.  See:  Two Minute Warning to BIG BROTHER going ON-LINE:

Las Vegas police Lt. Kevin McMahill said his department’s homeland security bureau isn’t overly concerned with Oath Keepers at this point, even though Rhodes says several active-duty Las Vegas officers are members of the group.

• Perhaps DHS already has the ID number of the RFID tags in the shoes and clothing of the Las Vegas officers and are tracking them through the RFID scanner enabled cell phones worn by the officers and those they come in contact with.
• How can you be worried about anybody who you can track in Real-Time on your computer or Smartphone wherever they go?  And then you can turn on the officers cell phones and use them as bugs, even if they are turned off as reported on Fox News video at the end of this post: Two Minute Warning to BIG BROTHER going ON-LINE:

“I wouldn’t classify Oath Keepers as no threat at all, but I wouldn’t classify them as a threat either,” McMahill said. “There’s always a chance an individual can step outside the boundaries of what an organization stands for and do something wrong.”

• Yeah, I guess there always is a chance that an individual or an entire nation of The Free and The Brave could step outside of total despotic Socialist control, just like our families, friends, neighbors and Continentals did in the 1700s when our Government of over 150 years became usurping tyrannical over taxing despots.  Isn’t it terrible that We The People abolished our Government to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to us seemed most likely to effect our unalienable Rights, Safety and Happiness when our Government became destructive of these ends?  Just imagine how horrible we were and how horrible our country became and how awful it was that the average common working man became wealth, as the envy of the entire world, because of our awfulness until 1913 when the initial tyranny started all over again with the advent of the constitutionally contemptuous Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the non-ratified ratification of The Sixteenth Amendment by the lying Secretary of State Philanderer Knox reporting such to the Administration and both House of Congress.  See the book called The Law that Never Was.  Do you know that we didn’t have income taxes for almost 150 years and during that period the growth rate of individual wealth for the average common workingman was far beyond anything ever known before or since in Earth’s history?

Rhodes, a former firearms instructor, said he easily could have started Oath Keepers during the Bush administration, but his focus during those years was first on getting his law degree and then volunteering on the 2008 presidential campaign of Texas Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican in whose office Rhodes worked during the 1990s.

What Rhodes terms “the rise of executive privilege” during the post-9/11 years of the Bush presidency will in his opinion only accelerate with Obama in office. What’s worse, he said, is that “gun-hating extremists” now control the White House.

• You mean like Eric Holder and the majority of the Administration and Czars who are big Brady Bill supporters?  How about H.R. 45: Blair Holt’s Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009

 

Two things have happened since the Homeland Security Department and Southern Poverty Law Center released their reports on extremism: Membership of Oath Keepers has spiked dramatically. And Rhodes has had to do a lot of explaining.

• Explaining what.  That officers and military want to support the LAW that We The People wrote, established and ordained on the Federal Government?  Imagine that?

“We’re not a militia,” he said. “And we’re not part and parcel of the white supremacist movement. I loathe white supremacists.”

Oath Keepers doesn’t offer paramilitary training; nor does it have a military command structure. It instead has board members, which include directors in seven states and outreach coordinators to currently serving local and federal law enforcement and military personnel. The group’s state director in Montana, who goes by the name Elias Alias, has said Montana and other states should consider seceding from the United States in protest of the federal government’s conduct.

• I am rather disappointed.  I would humbly request the honorable members of the Oath Keepers to consider training their fellow countrymen in military tactics to help them protect our Constitution from all enemies and tyrants both foreign and domestic.  Is there a law against law abiding Americans, not scofflaws like those in either house of Congress or the Administration, to learn how to handle themselves in case of Constitutional emergency.  Really, would you please consider offering training courses?  Our Government is getting more and more Socialist every day through usurpation, corruption and utter constitutional lawlessness.  The Constitution cannot protect itself, somebody has to do it.  And considering what all three branches are up to, I am really concerned that we are going to lose our INDIVIDUAL God given unalienable rights, authority over Government and protection of our earnings and property from them in the face of TRILLIONS on top of TRILLIONS resultant from unconstitutional usurpation resulting in a heinous corruption and tyranny far beyond the bounds and scope of Government allowed by Article 1 Section 8 as supported the 9^th and 10^th Amendments of our supreme laws of our land.

Leaders of the group will come together in Las Vegas starting Oct. 24 for the inaugural national conference of Oath Keepers.

• The Liberty Tree Lantern looks forward to reporting on your noble assembly to our fellow countrymen that see a ray of hope for the cause of freedom, liberty and prosperity through the reconstitution of Constitutional Law, thanks in large part to the Oath Keepers.

Among the group’s other leaders is Dave Freeman, an Army veteran and former Las Vegas police sergeant who spent more than 30 years with the Metropolitan Police Department.

For Freeman, Oath Keepers has become something of a family affair. He recruited his niece, a former police chief, to serve as state director for Oath Keepers in Massachusetts.

“When you believe in something, you have to do more than just pay it lip service,” said Freeman, the group’s Southern Nevada director and national peace officer liaison. “This is a crusade I believe in.”

Another prominent Oath Keeper is former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who has long been an outspoken government critic.

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Mack a “longtime militia hero” who helped weaken gun control laws.

An incident earlier this year in rural Iowa, not inside the Washington Beltway, motivated Rhodes to start Oath Keepers.

He questioned why the Iowa National Guard planned to use residents of a small town to participate in training on door-to-door searches for weapons.

The Guard said the training was to help soldiers who might be asked to carry out similar searches in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But for Rhodes, it looked like preparation for a future declaration of martial law. It reminded him of the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when police officers reportedly confiscated legally owned firearms. What the government called emergency response after the levees broke, Rhodes saw as the imposition of martial law.

If it hadn’t been for April 19 of this year, Oath Keepers might not have gained the notoriety it now has.

On the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington Green, the Massachusetts battle that started the American Revolution in 1775, a group of Oath Keepers went to the battle site and reaffirmed their pledge to the Constitution.

• AMEN!

The gathering was mentioned in the Southern Poverty Law Center report because April 19 is also the anniversary of the deadly end to the federal siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993; and of the retaliatory bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.

Rhodes and Potok have never talked, but if they did, they might find themselves speaking a different language.

“Let them say what they want to say, but April 19 has very much become a day for the extreme radical right,” Potok said.

• What the heck is an “extreme radical right”?  Somebody who completely supports the Declaration of Independence and the rule of LAW AS WRITTEN in The Constitution, word for word, in spirit and intent as it WAS meant on the day it was ratified by the Union?  If this is “extreme” and bad what were the people who fought and died so that we could be free?  If this is extreme are our founding fathers also extreme?  If so, what has happened to our country?
• Don’t you see what the “powers that be” are doing to us and our country people?  They are tearing us, our families, our religion apart in a divide and conquer maneuver of Mass Behavior Modification through Political Correctness, rejection of assimilation into the melting pot of the UNIQUE American culture by definition called Multiculturalism, and “OVER” Tolerance which has almost nothing to do with tolerance as it has to do with God’s Law of what is tolerable and what is not.  These people use “gray” as an excuse to do all sorts of immoral things and I am not talking about sexual matters but other matters of virtue necessary for the survival of a Republic, freedom, liberty and individual rights.
• Isn’t it amazing how the dark side of the force insinuates that believing in freedom, liberty and our great American Heritage and history is bad.
• Count me in for the next Lexington party on April 19^th!  If my countrymen needs my help to protect our Constitution and our rights, I’ll even bring a musket or three.

Rhodes couldn’t disagree more.

“There are thousands of Americans who go to Lexington to watch re-enactments of people shooting at troops,” Rhodes said. “But if you’re a group of military and police there, they somehow find this offensive.”

• Isn’t it wonderful that Oath Keepers understand that our Government is of The People, For the People and BY THE PEOPLE; and further that we are above Government as per our authority that we were given by our creator.  See The Declaration of Independence.  Rhodes said he hopes Oath Keepers members think aboutWe The People ‘borrowed’ some of our authority that we were given by God, to the Government for the ‘privilege’ of handling only the SEVENTEEN items We The People ‘enumerated’ and ‘borrowed’ our authorization in Article 1 Section 8 of THE LAW as further supported by the 9^th and 10^th Amendments in The Bill of Rights. the lawfulness of day-to-day orders they receive.
• Amen and Thank YOU!

For example, if a police officer feels he is being asked to do an illegal search of a home or vehicle, he should stand down.

• My God!  I sure hope so!

Rhodes eventually wants to create a legal defense fund for Oath Keepers who are disciplined by their employers for defying orders they deem unlawful or immoral.

• If their “employers” the Government, are ordering unlawful activities each and every single tyrant directly responsible should be tried and hung as traitors to The Constitution and as enemies of The American people.

“The message to law enforcement is not to become a tool of oppression,” he said.

• The American people will not only stand behind you, we will stand beside you, armed if necessary.

Rhodes, a husband and father of five home-schooled children, said he gets hundreds of e-mails a day, mostly from people interested in knowing more about his group.

He also gets a lot of questions from “birthers” wanting to know if he thinks Obama is really an American citizen and from “truthers” asking whether he believes the attacks of 9/11 were an inside job. The group doesn’t have an official position on either issue, he said.

Some of his responses to questions have turned would-be allies against him.

“I’ve been accused of being a traitor or a CIA operative because I’m not coming out and declaring that the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine is a biological weapon,” he said.

• Everybody should have a right to his or her opinion and, I believe the right to take or not take the vaccine, especially considering the contemporary and historical medical questions and problems with such vaccines.  Remember 1976 and all the physical harm that the flu vaccine caused to so many Thousands of people across America?