It's Complicated, See?

TV Reporter: "Do you want the government to relinquish control over all federal land?"

Oregon Wingnut: "I want the government to follow the Constitution."


Well, of course you do. And apparently only you know what the Constitution says, and it's way too much to ask, to suggest that you maybe oughta be specific. "The Constitution" has become the catch-all for people who probably haven't read it but are mad as hell and aren't gonna take it any more. Funny how their view of the Constitution never seems to allow for the right of the government to enact, and enforce, laws. Laws are infringements on various "fundamental" rights. Like the "fundamental" right to own a howitzer.

Washington Post reporter Janelle Ross had a point when she asked, "Why Aren't We Calling the Oregon Occupiers 'Terrorists?' "

The answer, of course, is that these are white guys who drive pickups and carry guns on their hips. They take over federal buildings with impunity, and are handled with kid gloves by the press: Don't expect Wolf Blitzer, any time soon, to be poised in front of the Malheur National Wildlife Headquarters building in Nowhere, Oregon, breathlessly asking a 90-word yes-or-no question to a local about the goings-on inside the building. These guys call themselves "militiamen,' and the press calls them 'occupiers.' If they were black and had no weapons and stayed on the sidewalk, they'd be called 'activists;' add signs, and they are 'insurgents;' and if one of them pushed a cop they'd be 'terrorists.'

I guess black people are scary, and white people, even white people who torture white children, are not. We're just supposed to, well, let them be. although that may disappoint some would-be Patriots who are itching for a fight.

The question is: at what point does all this despising of government become, well, insurrection, as Ms. Ross says, or treason, which is what an attempt, using violence, to overthrow the government is? We've had lots of threats, from elected representatives darkly suggesting "Second Amendment solutions" to Obamacare or some similar outrage on the part of the federal government, to a Texas governor threatening to take his state and leave the Union.* We have, it would appear, a sizable minority of the population asserting their "Second Amendment Rights" because of a conviction that they will need all their guns in order to fight their own government (You didn't think all those 330 million guns were in the hands of dedicated "sportsmen," didja?).

Where all this ends up? Unless we're lucky, maybe like, say, Mexico? And if unlucky, Afghanistan?


*Oh, would that it were so! Texans, anyway, are a treasonous bunch, having twice in one generation committed armed rebellion against their government (in 1845 and again in 1861).