Wingnut Watch

This WorldNetDaily article is about an organization called OathKeepers, which publishes on its website An invitation to soldiers and peace officers across the United States to pledge to refuse illegal orders – including "state of emergency" orders that could include disarming or detaining American citizens.

Their 10 point program:

Among the orders the soldiers are pledging NOT to obey:

1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people. … Any such order today would also be an act of war against the American people, and thus an act of treason. We will not make war on our own people, and we will not commit treason by obeying any such treasonous order.

2.We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects – such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons. … We expect that warrantless searches of homes and vehicles, under some pretext, will be the means used to attempt to disarm the people.

3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants" or to subject them to trial by military tribunal. … Any attempt to apply the laws of war to American civilians, under any pretext, such as against domestic "militia" groups the government brands "domestic terrorists," is an act of war and an act of treason.

4.We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a "state of emergency" on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state's legislature and governor. … It is the militia of a state and of the several states that the Constitution contemplates being used in any context, during any emergency within a state, not the standing army.

5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps. … Such tactics … by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, and by the Imperial Japanese in Nanking, turn[ed] entire cities into death camps. Any such order to disarm and confine the people of an American city will be an act of war and thus an act of treason.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext. … Such a vile order to forcibly intern Americans without charges or trial would be an act of war against the American people, and thus an act of treason, regardless of the pretext used.

8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to "keep the peace" or to "maintain control" during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.

10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

Spokesman Steware Rhodes explained their motivations, "He said the accumulation of power in the executive branch in recent years has been alarming. The fears crystallized when Obama took office and suddenly had access to the accumulated power."

It should be emphasized that although Rhodes has been concerned about "the accumulation of power in the executive branch" for several years, they did not act until a liberal Democrat became President. I agree with much of their manifesto, although this is clearly coming from the Right.

The group is going to be featured on G. Gordon Liddy's radio program. Liddy's concern for human rights and the Constituion, is selective, to say the least. The concerns about the confiscation of guns and "foreign troops" touches on rightwing fantasies that go back decades.

Now the Bush administration, for all its abuses, did not declare Martial Law and establish a dictatorship, and it is unlikely the Obama administration will either.