(Thanks Judy.)
Stewart Rhodes, left, founder and spokesman of Oath Keepers, talks to Kyle Zortman, 17, of Cedar City, Utah, right, along with Oath Keeper members John Francois, second from left, and Pat Kerby of Pahrump during the Crossroads of the West Gun Show on Saturday at Cashman Center.
Photos by K.M. Cannon.
A member of the Southern Nevada chapter of Oath Keepers who declined to be identified works on the group’s Web site during a meeting to plan the inaugural national conference of Oath Keepers in Las Vegas later this month.
Dave Freeman, national peace officer liaison and Southern Nevada director of Oath Keepers, right, says the group, which was founded in Las Vegas earlier this year, is standing up for the constitutional rights of Americans. Critics of the group say Oath Keepers draw members into “a world of false conspiracy theory.”
Dave Freeman, a leader of Oath Keepers, right, and Stewart Rhodes, the founder of Oath Keepers, discuss plans for the group’s inaugural national conference in Las Vegas later this month.
Depending on your perspective, the Oath Keepers are either strident defenders of liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia.
“Oath Keepers”? Who are they? Go here.
And the LVRJ just happens to be “involved” now because Oath Keepers are holding their 2009 conference in Las Vegas on October 24th and 25th.
From the LVRJ article:
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.
Because those who support and defend the Constitution are already suspect under the current Obama Administration — and because the Obama Administration already asked citizens to “turn in” other citizens when their information was not congruent (“fishy”) with the propaganda issued forth from the Obama White House — the comparisons between various fascist regimes are naturally forthcoming. Bush, the “labeled fascist” that he was — even GWB didn’t attempt to mark and limit those who disagreed as Mr Obama and his minions do now.
The LVRJ article continues:
More specifically, the group’s members, which 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.
Including the US government, the FBI, the Southern Poverty Law Center?
Extremist?
Here is the oath I took, originally, back in 1973:
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, the State of California, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Oddly enough, this is the same oath sworn by various state and federal law enforcement and military personnel.
Myself, as well.
So, under Oath Keepers, my original oath is now, somehow, deemed threatening to the current Obama Administration?
Because I am an EDUCATED MAN with regard to my own Constitution and because, after all, I am not only knowledgeable with its content and also with its implications and interpretations?
And that these so-called “interpretations” may possibly not be “in keeping” with the goals and directions of the current Obama Administration? To continue from the LVRJ article:
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.
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.
“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.
And myself as well. I am not a white supremacist. I am, however, a believer in the oath that I swore. Twice.
But more pointedly:
Rhodes said he hopes Oath Keepers members think about the lawfulness of day-to-day orders they receive.
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.
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.
“The message to law enforcement is not to become a tool of oppression,” he said.
And to the Obama Administration I say:
If you were NOT afraid of the lawful and proper dissemination of information, thoughts, opinions — you would NOT be attempting to dissuade anyone or any organization from any speech. There wouldn’t be a concerted effort to discredit Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
Free Speech is the BEST speech. And dissenting speech should be the MOST PROTECTED speech of all.
So sayeth the hallowed First Amendment.
To Mr Obama: your attempt to silence dissenters is, in fact, FASCISM.
It is a truism and an appropriate label. DEAL with it.
BZ
