The Patriot Movement

by Bob Livingston 
There is and has been for some time a propaganda war designed to marginalize and demonize the liberty movement and those who advocate for a government that is limited by the Constitution and rule of law. Last week, that war hit high gear, as it became apparent that rational discussion about the role of government is no longer possible — in Washington or elsewhere.
The hate group I call the Southern Preposterous Lie Center (read about it here, here and here) fired its salvo with its spring non-Intelligence Report, “The Year in Hate & Extremism.” The magazine is yet another regurgitation of the SPLC’s regular quarterly vomit used to divest widows, simpletons and progressives of their wealth so Morris Dees and his socialist partners can live the high life and work from swanky office space in downtown Montgomery, Ala.
In the report, the lie center equates liberty-minded, pro-Constitution conservative and libertarian Americans with the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi skinheads, but it draws no real nexus beyond the bogies inside Mark Potok’s collectivist brain. Potok and the lie center have created a “hate group” designation for these people: Patriots.
He begins one section, under the heading “Once Again, Gun Control Spurs the ‘Patriots,’” with this screed:

Twenty years ago, the passage of the Brady gun control bill helped ignite the first wave of the “Patriot” movement, a combustible mix of gun-toting militias and baseless conspiracy theories about government perfidy that culminated in the 1995 mass murder of 168 people in an Oklahoma City federal building.

One may recall that these “baseless conspiracy theories about government perfidy” include the Federal government’s murder by gunfire and incineration of 83 people — including women and children — living by their own choice in a compound in Waco, Texas; the cold-blooded murder of 14-year-old Sammy Weaver (who was shot in the back by U.S. Marshal Bill Degan and/or other Federal agents) and Vicki Weaver as she held her 10-month-old baby (shot in the head by the criminal FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi, who received a commendation rather than a deserved murder charge); the passage by Congress of the 2^nd Amendment-shredding Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994,  which outlawed semi-automatic weapons based on cosmetic features alone; and the 1993 attempt to force Americans into a socialist healthcare (deathcare) system dubbed Hillarycare.
Potok then makes a leap to tie displeasure over these instances of true “government perfidy” to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., with strings that have not been proven and that likely do not exist. However, while it is certain that the “government perfidy” did lead to a growth in the number of people who realized that government was getting out of control, it is more than likely that the Oklahoma City bombing was a false flag attack designed to bolster Bill Clinton’s failing Presidency, which was at its lowest point of his two terms. I explained that here. (And there is much more evidence available for those who wish to see it.)

This explanation, which I wrote in 2010, came after Clinton joined a chorus of Democrat progressives and statists and media talking heads (apologies for the redundancy) in comparing supporters of the then-burgeoning Tea Party movement with convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh (and Branch Davidians and Randy Weaver). So you see that Potok is just reviving a tired — but somewhat successful, thanks to the mainstream media government propaganda agents, many of whom turn to the lie center for “news” — message.
And just who does Potok and the lie center name as leaders of this “radical” right “Patriot” movement made up of “racists” and “extremists?” Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.); Representative Trey Radel (R-Fla.), who has said Obama could be impeached for executive actions on gun control; Sheriff Richard Mack; The Oath Keepers (current and former military and law enforcement who have vowed to uphold the oath they swore to the Constitution); former Constitution Party Presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin; Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel Action; Tony Adkins of Conservative-daily.com; Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch and FreedomWatch; the Family Research Council; Joseph Farah of WND.com; Donald Trump; and unnamed lawmakers (but you know who you are) in Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee who proposed laws that sought to prevent Federal gun control from applying to their States.

On Thursday, Senator John McCain (Senile old fool and supporter of perpetual war-Ariz.) and his trained monkey, Senator Lindsey Graham (Fascist and Liar-S.C.), denigrated Paul and also some of Paul’s allies — with fallacious and specious arguments  — over his almost 13-hour filibuster in which he sought a straight answer from President Barack Obama and/or Attorney General Eric Holder about the use of drones to kill Americans. But McCain didn’t stop there. He also took to the Senate floor to take swipes at libertarians and the liberty movement with yet more logical fallacies.
But McCain and Graham are not the first of the establishment Republicans to attempt to marginalize supporters of the Constitution and small government with ad hominems and logical fallacies. Nor is it just the establishment elected class and its propagandists who casually throw around the term “extremist” when talking about the honest, hardworking American business owners; blue- and white-collar workers; veterans; retirees and students who are linked to the liberty movement through the original grassroots local Tea Party groups and libertarian-oriented “Ron Paulites.” Notice that in the comments below articles on this site and others there are those who attempt to smear the Tea Party with baseless ad hominems and comparisons to the Taliban.

Recall that during the 2000 election, then-candidate George W. Bush ran on a platform of “compassionate conservatism.” Compassionate conservatism was, as I said at the time, doublespeak for national socialism or fascism. It was used to imply that conservative principles were somehow not compassionate and that Bush was somehow more high-minded, thinking and compassionate than those who opposed him in the primary.
That Bush was more high-minded, thinking and compassionate was not borne out by history. Bush policies are what accelerated the journey to where we now find ourselves: living in a police state engaged in perpetual war with a bloated, deficit-riddled, ever-growing government and in a time where Senators and Americans who oppose those policies are branded as extremists or potential terrorists. It was opposition to Bush policies at the end of his term that sparked the growth of the Tea Party in the first place.
It’s a sad day indeed when there is a necessity to ask whether our government feels it can label us as terrorists and disregard the Constitution and kill us without due process and when just asking the question gets you branded as an extremist or, worse, a libertarian, a  terrorist or a Patriot.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Payne, John Hancock, John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, Alexander Hamilton and a host of others were our first patriots. If their idea of government is extreme in the eyes of the SPLC, McCain and Graham, then I’m a part of the “Patriot” movement, too.
I suppose that makes the lie center, McCain, Graham and others of their ilk enemies of freedom and, therefore, extremist enemies of America. Maybe they’ll be featured in the SPLC’s next issue.