A PATRIOT'S LAST STAND
"YOU DON'T KNOW JACK!"
by John Reynolds

I'm going to tell you about someone that I would not describe as a close friend, but more than an acquaintance. I do not expect to be invited to their Christmas party, nor to social functions because I honestly don't know them that well, and vice versa. Geographic distance also precludes closer association with them.

This person, who I will call "Jack", is ready for the day when (he says it's "when", not "if") federal troops will descend upon his home with the intention of disarming him and arresting him for his political views. "Doing An Elian" on him, as he puts it. Jack doesn't strike me as unbalanced, in fact he appears to be a model of stability and reason. He happens to be a retired military physician. And he has guns. Lots of guns, and he's proud of them. All nice and legal too. Jack is a stickler for detail and legalities. He's also pretty handy with munitions, having worked in excavation.

I suspect there are alot of men and women out there just like Jack, but I wouldn't want to speculate if they have expended the same amount of effort as Jack has poured into his home. I know where he lives, but I'm not about to identify the location. I will say that he lives on about 20 heavily wooded acres up in the hills, and he's got himself a very nice home that is built partially underground and just about undetectable except perhaps by advanced surveillance from the sky. But it's not Jack's home that I am fascinated with, it's his decoy mobile home about 500 yards or so away, that is visible from the road, that has American and Confederate Flags waving proudly, all sorts of patriotic objects of art, like old cannons, swords, two 4 x 8 sheets of plywood with the "Don't Tread On Me" legend and snake painted oh-so-nicely, and an honest-to-goodness original sign from the 1950's that says "Impeach Earl Warren". The windows of that mobile home are tinted so you can't see in, and there are loudspeakers mounted to let Jack speak to any
intruders (which are being observed by a combination of video and web-cameras mounted discreetly out of sight). There are remote switches in the mobile home which can be controlled from the main house, to give the illusion at night of someone moving from room to room. This "decoy" home virtually screams "right-wing-militia-sanctuary" from every corner. It's a masterpiece (I have seen pictures of it).

There is alot of barbed wire around the front perimeter of the yard, and the front door of the mobile home looks like it's been reinforced with steel, and might even have a gun-port in it. It looks intimidating. It also has a couple of big old fuel tanks buried in the foundation, and I don't know the exact contents of those tanks, but it's my understanding that Jack has the equivalent of a gigantic "binary" weapon, the two ingredients are basically harmless UNTIL they come rushing together, hundreds of gallons all going
--WHAMMO-- at once.

Needless to say, the triggering switch for all of this potential mayhem is in the basement of Jack's main house, and his comment was "they might get me, but I'm taking as many of them with me as I can". I have no doubt in my mind that he fully intends to set off an amazing cat's cradle of destruction if such a day should ever dawn over his humble abode, I'm more than convinced that it will also pre-empt all programming and launch CNN's ratings into the stratosphere.

So how many Americans have thought about such things? The I.N.S. (I-nternal N-azi S-tormtrooper) raid on the family of Elian Gonzalez was a horrible demonstration of what the federal government really thinks about our U.S. Constitution, but let me pose a hypothetical question: what if each and every protester outside the Gonzalez household had a gun in their possession, and moreover, what if each and every member of the family inside the house had a gun on their hip, would Janet Reno and the INS have risked another Waco, or would they have backed off and just let the scheduled May 11th hearing take place without such tyrannical intervention? The answer to that question is of course, a crap-shoot. But Americans now find themselves in the same kind of
situation as our ancestor-colonists found themselves in 1775, faced with an arrogant and dictatorial government which no longer respects the law, tramples on human rights, taxes with impunity and without accountability, and without effective and adequate representation. What did our ancestors do? The answer my friends, is "Lexington and Concord". Do we have the courage to stand up and resist an even greater tyranny today, a tyranny that masquerades as the very government we established in freedom so long ago?

Our federal government (and it IS ours, that's what those big words "WE THE PEOPLE" mean) has been subverted and corrupted more thoroughly than any Communist conspiracy of the 1950's could have ever hoped for. The Executive Branch has mutated into a parasitic wannabe-monarchy that is answerable to no-one. The Judicial Branch cannot be depended upon for any kind of
consistent rulings which uphold the original intent of the Constitution, because our judges today seem more intent on doing what is commonly called "legislating from the bench". The Legislative Branch? Don't make me laugh. Trent Lott. Dennis Hastert. Tom DeLay. Orrin Hatch. If they were on trial for the crime of being patriots, they would be acquitted for lack of evidence. Will any of them rise to the level of a Patrick Henry? In the interest of being diplomatic, we'll just say that the actions of the aforementioned
Republican "leaders" do not instill the greatest confidence. (In a braver world, Lott and Hastert would have shut down the Congress following the INS assault in Miami, and informed the Arkanfuehrer that it was "no business as usual" until Attorney General Wacko was fired, just for starters....just my opinion, FYI)

So in the wake of the "Million Mom Myth", we see the beginnings of another campaign to demonize firearms, and the Second Amendment. The First Amendment was corrupted and nullified long ago, and the final nail in it's coffin was a federal stormtrooper attacking NBC cameraman Tony Zumbado, smashing his equipment, sending him to the hospital. Zumbado was inside the Gonzalez home in Miami to do his Constitutionally-protected duty to report the truth to the public. I wonder where the illustrious Tom Brokaw is concerning this outrage? The Fourth Amendment has been regularly violated by the federal government long before the Elian Raid, but it was the blatant and shameless actions in Miami that demonstrated just how dead the Fourth Amendment has become. Now,
every American should be sleeping a little less peacefully, because there's no guarantee that their door might be the next one kicked down by federal stormtroopers, and they along with their family members terrorized in the middle of the night. (or a little before dawn, as Deputy-Attorney Puppet Eric Holder put it so eloquently....)

But to hopefully bring all of this together into some concluding thoughts, I return to the example of "Jack" and his personal fortress. How long will it be before the federal government will begin going house to house, just as the British Army sought to do at Lexington and Concord, to confiscate the weapons that belong to "We The People"? While it is a alarming for me to contemplate Americans who are pondering the best way to make their last stand, I pray not only that it would NOT be their "last stand", but that there are alot more "Jacks" out there in the hills ready to stand up for our Country when the new Redcoats in Washington D.C. begin their campaign. And what might be the outcome of such a latter-day Revolution? In our first Revolution, we prevailed against tyranny, and established our independence and our freedoms which have sadly been nibbled away over the years. As for a second Revolution? My gut instinct says that our would-be Royalists in Washington just "don't know Jack".

God Bless Jack.

John Reynolds is a contractor for commercial radio and a former NBC Radio Affiliate News Director. We welcome John as our newest contributor.  John can be reached at [email protected].

Published in the May 24, 2000 issue of Ether Zone.
Copyright � 2000 Ether Zone  http://www.etherzone.com
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