How Right Wing Militia Terrorists Get the US Constitution Very Wrong
By: Keith Law
Tags: 2020 Presidential Race, Politics

The leaders of Right Wing Militia groups pretend to be defending our Constitution against tyranny. Some even carry copies to their gun toting protests. It would serve them and the rest of us well if they would take the time to read the first paragraph of the document.

Photo by Anthony Garand on Unsplash

Earlier this year, thirteen members of right-wing militia groups were arrested by FBI agents for attempting to kidnap Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer. They appear to have attempted an armed coup against a democratically elected government, and possibly to assassinate Whitmer. During the first presidential debate, Trump stumbled over a simple request to denounce another right wing militia group called “Proud Boys.” Recently, the House of Representatives was compelled to officially condemn right wing groups that rally around the QAnon conspiracy theory. Today, one of our freshman congresswomen is Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia, Republican), who is a QAnon supporter.

All of these terrorist groups and associations hitched their wagons to Trump, and Trump’s campaign appeared to be cheering on their support. Upon hearing about the foiled coup against the governor of Michigan, Trump’s first words denounced Whitmer instead of the terrorists. He claimed she “…locked down her state for everyone…”

Trump’s hyperbolic rhetoric couldn’t but add more fuel to enflame militia terrorists against Governor Whitmer for doing nothing more than following CDC guidelines regarding Covid-19. The CDC is of course a federal agency under Trump’s charge.

Right wing militia membership increased during the Obama presidency and as a direct response. Their shared hatred of Obama, and their racist beliefs more generally, explains why Trump and other Republicans pander to the rhetoric and antics of these groups. We should anticipate that militia groups will raise the level of their recruitment and increase their terrorist acts in the wake of Biden’s victory, and the threat they will feel due to the elevation of a powerful woman of color like Kamala Harris to vice president.

Right wing militia groups are terrorists in the same vein as Islamic terrorists for the simple fact that they are both ideologically driven. This is what differentiates terrorists from violent organized mobs and street gangs that operate black market syndicates. Currently, right wing terrorism is recognized as a far worse threat to Americans than Islamic terrorism.

According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), “right-wing extremists pose the most significant terrorism threat to the United States.” While conservative media outlets like FOX focus their viewers’ attention on Islamic extremism, according to CSIS right-wing terrorism has accounted for the vast majority of incidents since 1994, including two thirds of the attacks in 2019, and over 90 percent so far in 2020. CSIS continues, “Over the next year, the threat of terrorism in the United States will likely increase based on several factors, such as the November 2020 presidential election and the response to the Covid-19 crisis.”

In the case of Islamic terrorists, their warped ideology stems from a perversion of the Islamic religion and the Koran. This is borne out by the vast majority of Muslims who do not support their extremist views and violent jihad against innocent civilians.

For right wing militia groups, instead of a perversion of religion they twist the US Constitution to serve their purposes. Nearly all militia groups believe they are protecting the Founders’ intent in the Constitution in the same way that militant Muslims believe they are protecting God’s commandments as expressed in the Koran. They misrepresent the Constitution by a reduction of the Founders’ principles into a simplistic obsession with liberty, which is often expressed in flags and decals depicting a rattlesnake that warns the rest of us, “Don’t tread on me.”

The Preamble to the Constitution, its first paragraph, is where the Founders expressed the values that their newly constituted government was created to ensure. In other words, the Preamble expressed what they believed a more perfect union was, and the articles that followed established how we the people could best achieve that promise.

You will notice in the Preamble that I share below that the Founders placed liberty last in their list of what constitutes a perfect union, while they placed justice first. Their values included insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, and promoting the general welfare.

Promoting the general welfare of the citizens of Michigan is what Governor Whitmer was doing by following CDC guidelines regarding COVID-19. Providing for our common defense is what the FBI did by infiltrating and arresting those who plotted against the elected government of those same citizens.

What follows is The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The exclusion of all of the Founders’ values but the last one regarding liberty could explain the attraction of misguided young men to militia terrorist groups. For all of their 18th Century faults (racists, sexists, well, they had more than a few), still, our Founders were not desperate young men, but elders with the values and judgment that comes with maturity. The perfect union sought by the Founders was not a place where adolescent bullies get whatever they want whenever they want.

I read recently that many militia members carry a copy of the Constitution with them to their gun-toting protests. Wouldn’t it be great if they were to read it as well, and especially the first paragraph? Then we might have a fruitful conversation about how they are working with the rest of us to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for our common defense, and promote our general welfare. For example, they might answer how not wearing masks in the midst of a plague is good for public health.

To be fair, we then will share with them how the rest of us are securing the blessings of liberty, as I am by writing this editorial.

Of course militia members have every right to argue for their libertarian view that the freedom to do what they want when they want should be absolute. They should also understand that by doing so they are revolting against most of the principles our Founders expressed in the Constitution. For the sake of honesty, if that is what they want, then they should burn their copies of the Constitution in protest the same way that in the 60s Vietnam protesters had the gumption to burn their draft cards and feminists burned their bras. All of these are expressions of free speech protected by our Constitution, which is what we are supposed to be supporting and defending.