Armed Seditionists to Demonstrate Today
Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Rightwing seditionists are celebrating by bringing their guns to a demonstration in Virginia to protest government. From this morning's Post:
These people seem to hold a belief that the government is planning to take their guns away from them, but I don't see any sign that that is happening. President Obama has allowed people to carry weapons at his speeches, where his predecessor would throw you out for wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a Democratic candidate on it, I don't see how anyone can say that freedom has been suddenly abridged by the new administration.
The Post story includes this observation:
This demonstration is intended as a show of force by individuals who intend to use their weapons to fight the "totalitarian socialism" they imagine the US government to represent.
Today's date was carefully chosen.
Do you buy that? I don't either.
Daniel Almond, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, is ready to "muster outside D.C." on Monday with several dozen other self-proclaimed patriots, all of them armed. They intend to make history as the first people to take their guns to a demonstration in a national park, and the Virginia rally is deliberately being held just a few miles from the Capitol and the White House.
Almond plans to have his pistol loaded and openly carried, his rifle unloaded and slung to the rear, a bandoleer of magazines containing ammunition draped over his polo-shirted shoulder. The Atlanta area real estate agent organized the rally because he is upset about health-care reform, climate control, bank bailouts, drug laws and what he sees as President Obama's insistence on and the Democratic Congress's capitulation to a "totalitarian socialism" that tramples individual rights.
A member of several heretofore little-known groups, including Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and Oath Keepers -- former and active military and law enforcement officials who have vowed to resist laws they deem unconstitutional -- Almond, 31, considers packing heat on the doorstep of the federal government within the mainstream of political speech.
Others consider it an alarming escalation of paranoia and anger in the age of Obama.
"What I think is important to note is that many of the speakers have really threatened violence, and it's a real threat to the rule of law," Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said of the program for the armed rally. "They are calling health care and taxes that have been duly enacted by a democratically elected Congress tyrannical, and they feel they have a right to confront that individually." Militia movement will be packing heat at rally on the Potomac
These people seem to hold a belief that the government is planning to take their guns away from them, but I don't see any sign that that is happening. President Obama has allowed people to carry weapons at his speeches, where his predecessor would throw you out for wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a Democratic candidate on it, I don't see how anyone can say that freedom has been suddenly abridged by the new administration.
The Post story includes this observation:
When they stand on the river banks Monday and preach an activism that sounds to some like sedition, the armed demonstrators will have the full support of the federal government they fear, carefully detailed in the 26-page event permit, complete with the gun regulations of both Virginia and the Interior Department and a commitment to provide fencing, barricades and bike racks for the event.
"We handle tens of thousands of demonstrations of a First Amendment nature annually," said Dave Schlosser, spokesmen for the U.S. Park Police, "and we are handling this event no differently than any of the others. We assess what their needs are to allow us to facilitate a safe and successful demonstration so they can exercise their rights to free speech and free assembly without interference."
This demonstration is intended as a show of force by individuals who intend to use their weapons to fight the "totalitarian socialism" they imagine the US government to represent.
Today's date was carefully chosen.
April 19 is the anniversary of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and the government's final confrontation in 1993 with the Branch Davidian cult members in Waco, Tex. But Almond said he chose the date to honor the anniversary of the 1775 battles at Lexington and Concord that began the Revolutionary War, "and that is the only reason."
Do you buy that? I don't either.
posted by JimK at 9:26 AM
9 Comments:
Jim, you're too fixated on these fringe groups
Anon, I became fixated on "these fringe groups" when they tried to bring their brand of intolerance to my home county. If you ignore them, it turns out, they won't go away.
JimK
CRC had nothing to do with "armed seditionists"
they were trying to advocate for responsible education in our schools
if that's what you're talking about, you're way off base
In that case, Anon, you're wrong, I do not fixate on "armed seditionists." This is probably the first time I have mentioned them.
I thought you were talking about rightwing fringe groups in general.
JimK
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anon, that comment did not meet any standard at all.
JimK
"Anons" comments rarely meet any standard (except for those he sets for himself)
"Why is it that as a society we feel more comfortable with two men holding guns than hands?"-Gaines
Liberal Democrats and their friends in the media have tried just about everything to dismiss and discredit the tea-party movement. They've accused Americans who are anxious and angry about a rapidly encroaching government of being racists, extremists, birthers, pawns of a corporate "AstroTurf" effort—and, now, potential Timothy McVeighs.
No less a figure than Bill Clinton seized on the occasion of the Oklahoma City bombing's 15th anniversary to lecture tea-party activists, first in a speech last week to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, then in a Monday New York Times op-ed. "Have at it, go fight, go do whatever you want," he said in the speech. "You don't have to be nice; you can be harsh. But you've got to be very careful not to advocate violence or cross the line." In the op-ed, he wrote: "There is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government."
Taken strictly at face value, these statements are unobjectionable. Yet given that the tea-party movement has been peaceful and law-abiding, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Mr. Clinton is engaging in a not-so-subtle smear campaign.
In doing so, Mr. Clinton is taking a page out of his own Presidential playbook. Five days after the 1995 bombing, he delivered a speech in which he denounced "purveyors of hatred and division." He said, "They leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable. . . . When they say things that are irresponsible, that may have egregious consequences, we must call them on it." A news report at the time noted that Mr. Clinton made these incendiary accusations while "never putting a noun to the pronoun."
Mr. Clinton's opposition to "demonizing the government" would be more credible had he been heard from on the subject during the first eight years after he left office—when, for example, Hollywood demonized George W. Bush by releasing "Fahrenheit 9/11," or when Mr. Clinton's own former Vice President railed against the man who beat him in 2000: "He betrayed this country!"
Instead, Mr. Clinton's effort to exploit the memory of Oklahoma City looks like a partisan cheap shot. In his speech last week, the former President observed that, unlike the Boston Tea Party, "this fight is about taxation by duly, honestly elected representatives that you don't happen to agree with, that you can vote out at the next election." Our guess is that the next election is what he's really afraid of.
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