Time Magazine Does Battlespace Preparation for Leviathan (and unwittingly does us a favor).

"Locked and Loaded: The Secret World of Extreme Militias" is full of the usual lying conflation of constitutional militias and racial collectivists. Funny, they don't consult Professor Robert Churchill who is the premier authority on the subject since his well-researched book, To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face. Neither do they quote long-time constitutional militia leaders like Bob Wright.

Without bothering to inconvenience themselves by interviewing me, they quote me nonetheless:

Regardless of what conscience tells them, what chance do would-be armed rebels possibly have of prevailing against the armed might of the U.S.?

One answer comes from former Alabama militia leader Mike Vanderboegh, who wrote an essay that is among the most widely republished on antigovernment extremist sites today. In "What Good Is a Handgun Against an Army?" Vanderboegh says the tactical question is easy: Kill the enemy one soldier at a time. A patriot needs only a "cheap little pistol and the guts to use it," he writes, to shoot a soldier in the head and take his rifle; with a friend, such a man will soon have "a truck full of arms and ammunition." Vanderboegh is hardly a man of action himself, living these days on government disability checks. Even so, when he wrote a blog post in March urging followers to protest the health care bill by breaking windows at Democratic Party offices, they did so across the country.

They do not mention the Three Percenters. This is unfortunate. Can you imagine the effect that the concept of "One Hundred Heads" in a national rag like Time would have on the collectivist tongue cluckers of the Ruling Class in their deliberations?

The "Letter From the Editor" which accompanies the cover story frets:

True patriotism is not owned by any party or person. Nor is there a one-size-fits-all definition that would please all those who consider themselves patriots. We each define the idea — and act on it — in our own way. But there are some definitions that cross the line, that pervert patriotism and take it to a place that is hateful and dangerous. Barry Goldwater famously declared in his acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican Convention that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Fine. But some forms of extremism in defense of a misguided sense of liberty can be poisonous. And such noxious extremism can come from left or right — or anywhere.

In this week's powerful and disturbing cover story, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative correspondent Barton Gellman explores the world of extreme antigovernment alienation, from the training protocols of America's militias all the way to the deranged plans of a neo-Nazi who sought to plant a dirty bomb in Washington. In recent years, rhetoric on the left and the right of the political spectrum has grown more incendiary, but both sides still aim to achieve their ends with ballots, not bullets. The story portrays those who believe that government is more than just the problem; they believe it is the enemy. The most extreme militants do not believe in change through peaceful means and think it is only a matter of time before they will have to take up arms against the federal government.

Now I'm a "noxious extremist." Noxious. Who knew?

That the Ohio Defense Force violated one of my frequently expressed prime directives and allowed Time to embed a reporter and photographer on an FTX ought to be cause for condemnation. But looking at the overall result, I can't work myself up to be angry about it.

Look at this series of photos. Then look at them again. What do you see? What would an average member of the public see? You know what comes through these photos to me? Although I'm sure that the purpose was to focus on the scary firearms, what I see in these photos is the militiamen's (and women's) essential humanity. On the move and at rest, they look like nothing so much as those photos of American soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Though certainly a conflationary mess in its entirety and full of qualifying language to achieve its purpose, the article's quotes of the unit members are of the same sort that you would hear from the vast majority of constitutional militia units, causing Time to admit, "As militias go, the Ohio Defense Force is on the moderate side."

Of course they go on to say:

"Scores of armed antigovernment groups, some of them far more radical, have formed or been revived during the Obama years, according to law-enforcement agencies and outside watchdogs. A six-month TIME investigation reveals that recruiting, planning, training and explicit calls for a shooting war are on the rise, as are criminal investigations by the FBI and state authorities."

I'm not so sure that this message is a negative one for our ultimate purpose. Is this not the idea we have trying to get across?

"If you try to take any more of our liberty, we will kill you."

Although they try their damnedest to conflate us with racial collectivists, this message still comes through. In attempting to do battlespace preparation for a federal crackdown, Time has also helped us.

Mike
III