Patriot's Day

Wrote this for 4/19, and life got in the way of posting it. Here it is, finally.


I want you to imagine a small town. Let’s say it’s in Montana. It’s rural, but not isolated, small but not quaint. The majority of its citizens are churchgoers. The majority of them home school their children. They are doctors and lawyers and shopkeepers and most of them are farmers. They are, without exception, hunters.

The most interesting feature of this town is the fact that most of the men in the town are soldiers. From the age of 16 and on, the boys and men train outside the town as soldiers. Nearly every home in the town has at least one automatic rifle per person, and several of the townspeople possess rocket propelled grenade launchers.

Many of them hold anti-government views. The preachers continually harangue on the topic of taxation. Many of them are upset about perceived government abuses, like redistricting, the importation of foreign troops, and federal investigation of conspiracy theory groups.

In a nutshell, our small town is filled with heavily armed, religious anti-government radicals. Their religious leaders continually reinforce their extreme beliefs, and the parents continually indoctrinate their children in these extreme beliefs as well.

Obviously, the government sees this town as dangerous. It sees this small town as a place where domestic terrorists are born, bred, trained, and constantly reinforced in their beliefs. This town is an American version of Sadr City, it’s newspaper and pulpit the American version of Al-Jazeera. Radicals infest every layer and class of the population.

The federal government decides to defang the radicals in our small Montana town. Generously, they decide not to issue any arrest warrants. Instead, they’ll secure and destroy the heavy weapons like the rocket launchers, and then vacate the town, leaving the townspeople to continue their paramilitary training with their automatic weapons. This is an unprecedented move – if you or I were to possess machine guns without the proper permits, we’d be sent to prison for ten years.

But whatever their reason, federal officials have decided to spare the anti-government radicals in our small Montana town from prison. All they want are the heavy weapons.

They are not going to take any chances however. They send Humvees filled with men, eight hundred of them, to secure the town while the weapons are destroyed. As every able-bodied person, sixteen years of age or older is proficient with military style weapons equal to those possessed by the army, this is not considered overkill. Given the residents familiarity with the area and the extent of their paramilitary training – nearly to same level of proficiency as the soldiers – this is somewhat less than one would recommend.

Around eight in the morning on a crisp spring day, the humvees and troop carriers pull up in the town square and start disgorging the nearly one thousand men. Eighty of the town’s paramilitary group moves into the square, fully armed, to oppose them.

Faced with a threat to his men, the commander of the government force orders the civilians to leave immediately. Sensing the futility of going up against a force ten times larger, the commander of the paramilitary group orders his “soldiers” to withdraw. A few do, and the majority begins to warily fall back.

Suddenly, a shot booms out, and then the violence starts. No one knew who fired first. Men are running, shooting, shouting, and dying. The armed townsfolk, faced with certain death, run for their lives.

Eight of them are left dead on the town square.

Their blood up, the soldiers prepare to storm the houses throughout the town, looking for those who attacked them. Remembering his orders, their commander assembles them and proceeds to carry out his assignment searching peaceably for the rocket launchers and other explosives.

The only violence they employ before leaving the town is to hold the bar owner at gunpoint, whereupon he gives up the location of the illegal weapons. These, and their ammunition are destroyed by the troops.

Then, despite being attacked, despite the seriousness of the crimes for which they’ve been dispatched, they pack up and leave, having harmed no civilians and damaged no one’s legally owned property.

Communications being what they are, the surrounding communities hear about the raid very quickly. Local communities are quite similar, and mobilize their paramilitary forces just as soon as they hear about the federal incursion. They themselves fear being raided, and are considering coming to the aid of our small Montana town.

The highway traveled by federal convoy forces their vehicles to drive through a valley just before a bridge. As the convoy is crossing the bridge, the local paramilitary groups pull up at the out-end of bridge, and along either side of the valley, trapping them.

Faced with armed and threatening men, examples of which had opened fire on them hours earlier, the federal officers open fire. There is no confusion this time, everyone knows it’s the government troops who fired the first shot.

The Montana paramilitary groups open fire on the surrounded men. It’s as close to a massacre as one the federal government has ever faced. On that road, they lose nearly an eighth of their men, and nearly another quarter are wounded.

How would the government respond? How would the media respond? How would the American people respond?

How would you respond?

With praise? With support? With condemnation?

Would you stage a protest? Write a letter to your congressman? Send funds? Hold a candlelight vigil?

Show up with your rifle?

If you support them, praise them openly, drive down to Montana with your deer-rifle in the back seat, ready to defend the town, then you’ve just declared war on the federal government.

If you condemn them, accuse them, you just opposed the start of the first American revolution.

Throughout history, on this day, men and women have shown up with their rifles. They’ve held in their untrained, civilian hands primitive and unsuitable weapons, stared down the guns of better-armed and trained soldiers – more often than not their countrymen – and said –

No.

We are free.

And we would rather die than be anything else.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Militias are defined as civilian soldiers, or all able-bodied civilians capable of bearing weapons in defense of their nation, state, city, or family.

The Massachusetts men standing before the guns of the British military were a militia.
The Southerners standing before the guns of the Northern military were a militia.
The Jews standing before the guns of the Nazi military were a militia.
The Branch Davidians standing before the guns of the American military were a militia.

They were Patriots.