The Revolution Will Be Webcasted

It's getting damn scary out there, folks. Back in Clinton's day, militias and anti-government groups didn't use the internet so much. Now they have their own websites, making it easier than ever for people to join up to "fight the coming war"...

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, 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."

Hmm. Ex-soldiers and cops ready to prevent America from becoming a dictatorship. Gee, that doesn't sound like a problem...especially since after eight years of a Bush/Cheney junta, these guys are only formed a few months after Obama takes office. Now that's not suspicious as hell.

But let's see what the Oath Keepers have to say for themselves:

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.

Nonetheless, Potok's group now monitors Oath Keepers on its Web site blog "Hatewatch."

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.

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.

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

Nope, these guys aren't a problem.

Keep telling yourselves that these guys are harmless, they're not driven in part by racism or paranoia, and that they're non-violent, and that calling for the police and military to consider the government to be illegitimate and to refuse to follow orders is a perfectly normal thing to do.

So what's Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes's excuse for letting Bush slide?

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.

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.

You see, government power isn't a problem until the people you don't like are in charge of wielding that power. Only then are they illegitimate. Only then do groups like Oath Keepers get formed. It was no problem when Bush was in charge, starting his wars and wrecking the economy. No, the real problem was the interminable two months between when Barack Obama took office and Oath Keepers was formed in March. That was the final straw, you see. Now it's perfectly fine for the police and military to turn against the government and for states to secede from the union. It's not like that has ever caused problems in America's history or anything.

Look, I have my problems with Obama's use of Bush-era anti-terror powers and tactics, but he has improved in a number of areas. I agree that vigilance is needed, but there's a difference. The difference is that these guys consider a lot more than just Obama to be the enemy. He has protection. Most of the rest of us don't.

If your first response to the election of an African-American president is to form a network of ex-military and police in order to combat what you see as a fascist takeover of the country, there's something wrong.

And it will only get worse from here.