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[Silver]

Claire Wolfe has spelled it out with her typical brilliance:

America’s UberGovernment. And the rest of us.

Read that first. It is definitely worth the time.

So now what?  As Claire wrote:

It’s dawning on a lot more people that a government run by secret spymasters is illegitimate even by the most conventional, mainstream standards. Among freedomistas, even those like the folks at DownsizeDC — who are usually pretty polite, mainstream, and hopeful of working within the system — are talking last straws.

Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA were a shock, though not a surprise. Now this week they’re followed by news of DEA operations that are top secret — but obviously, no doubt about it, are the result of collusion between the DEA and the NSA (“We’re only spying on you so we can keep you safe from brown-skinned furriners with scary religions, really!”). And these operations are resulting in arrest, asset forfeiture, and sometimes decades in prison for Americans.

there is no legitimate U.S. government — merely a clever puppet show of one. There is no federal government to which anyone, anywhere owes the slightest allegiance. The country is run by its “security” apparatus.

  Illegitimate

There are NO lawful orders, because there is no lawful government.  Perhaps there was, once, but no longer.

Congress has lost power to a gigantic “security” apparatus that suspects and investigates everyone, makes war from the air on individuals (it still boggles my mind that more people aren’t boggled that drone warfare is conducted by the CIA and not the Pentagon), has U.S. citizens arrested and assassinated, and is accountable to absolutely no “of the people” authority whatsoever.

What if you could sit Aunt Lyda and Uncle William and all the other members of the Average family down and point out to them that a government that’s ridden with enormous secret agencies operating under secret law interpreted by secret courts is not, cannot be, and will never be, a democracy or a republic or whatever form you’ve been taught all these years to salute?

But I'm not asking Aunt Lyda.  I'm asking the Oath-Keepers.  The people who have already taken the first steps towards enlightenment, but did so before they had to confront the complete collapse of what you took an oath to defend.

What now?

Peace,

Silver

[Klapton Isgod]

We are going to continue reaching out to active duty military personnel in hopes that some of them will refuse to turn on us when ordered to do so.  Many people think our mission is to somehow save the republic.  It is not.  It is to shape the future battlespace by undermining the culture of unquestioning obedience among our military.

[Rarick]

Yeah, I have reached out to some old buddies and have found out that they have plugged into the oath keepers concept as well as now being wide awake and semi panicked trying to get their gear together........  Those buddies however are saying a lot of the youngling have bought the rat poison and live off of it........  more than before too, some are cynically picking the winning team, others are power damaged.......

[Klapton Isgod]

Yeah, I have reached out to some old buddies and have found out that they have plugged into the oath keepers concept as well as now being wide awake and semi panicked trying to get their gear together........  Those buddies however are saying a lot of the youngling have bought the rat poison and live off of it........  more than before too, some are cynically picking the winning team, others are power damaged.......

Yeah...  It's not pretty.  Our mission is also to LEOs, which gives even less hope.  There is reason for optimism with some rural sherriff departments.  But big city police departments?  They are mostly beyond redemption.  They have been so corrupt for so long, that no one with a conscience could stay employed with them.  And we only need to look at the Boston bombing martial law to see that both the sheeple and the wolves can't wait to play their parts in the ever-increasing tyranny.

[da gooch]

We are going to continue reaching out to active duty military personnel in hopes that some of them will refuse to turn on us when ordered to do so.  Many people think our mission is to somehow save the republic.  It is not. It is to shape the future battlespace by undermining the culture of unquestioning obedience among our military.

emphasis is mine

Well Said Klapton.

Many are the folks who do not understand that Oath Keepers is a "New" concept, that all who have taken the oath to date are not Oath Keepers and that our mission is to inform and educate those oath takers not to overthrow and destroy all threats to the Liberty of the people.
The people themselves are responsible for their own Liberty, defense and protection.
No Government or Government Police Force is needed.



When I see someone complain that Oath Keepers is "failing" in our mission I KNOW that they do not understand our mission.  For it, our mission, is still on track and although slow of pace IS making a difference.

It is MY opinion that most of the folks who claim that OK is "failing" in our mission are simply looking outside of themselves for "Someone", to come galloping over the hill with the banners flying, to Rescue them from their enemies so they don't have to risk anything on their own behalf.
(That has always been one of the false claims of the need for government.)

OR, they are attempting to belittle what progress we have made as too little too late.

That last may be true, that our efforts are too little too late, but we are at very least trying while the whiners do nothing but complain of our attempts to defang the monster.

[Silver]

I intended no criticism; it was an honest question.  I have reservations about OK but don't generally attack other people working for liberty. 

It seems to me that the threat has evolved, and I was curious how this would affect the OODA loop.  The OK  threat model seemed to be that soldiers might one day confront a choice about their response to a plainly unconstitutional order in the context of generally lawful orders.

Now one can argue there are no lawful orders, the government has lost any pretense of legitimacy, and rules by violence alone.  The threat has changed.  Responding to past threats in battle rarely works well.

Peace,

Silver

[jamie]

I realize there is a lot of hate for the Constitution and for good reason. But if the problem isn't framed to restore the Constitution then a favorable outcome is very less certain.

Silver is asking what will Oath-Keepers do, what else can they do except keep on message?  To me that message is the real revolutionaries and usurpers are the present government.

The future battle space has to be sharply defined.  People won't understand anything else.

[gunslinger598]

 

[Adventurer, Explorer, Inquiring Mind.]

I realize there is a lot of hate for the Constitution and for good reason. But if the problem isn't framed to restore the Constitution then a favorable outcome is very less certain.

Silver is asking what will Oath-Keepers do, what else can they do except keep on message?  To me that message is the real revolutionaries and usurpers are the present government.

The future battle space has to be sharply defined.  People won't understand anything else.

Indeed, the revolution "within the form" of the present government and its antecedent was remarkably successful, so much so, that they've managed to usurp all the power to themselves by either wealth or stealth.  Violence is only rarely needed.  People side with the tyrants despite suffering under their yoke.  They cannot comprehend anything other than the current paradigm.  The usurpers have been so incredibly successful that one cannot but commend them on their remarkable tactics.  Contrary to Ayn Rand's philosophical stance, the tyrants actually won "the war against the mind of man."  Look around.  Those who try to think critically, logically and creatively are a rarity, even today in the age of the internet, where successful attempts at such can be easily shared with others and thus won't die off in a cave with the hermit who thought them up. 

I say this because, as I see it, the battlespace will be sharply defined for those of us who think.  When things go to their logical conclusion (may be years, may be decades, may be days, nobody knows for sure) the tyrants, due to their fantastic usurpation of education, partly due to the glorification of obedience by both religious folks and atheists, will not be without a shortage of leading psychopaths and following psychopaths.  Psychopathy, far from being rightfully extirpated, is enhanced and backed up by government.  For that particular pathology of murder and generally (but thoroughly sanctioned) psychotic mindset, there is nothing more joyful than ruining someone else's day or controlling someone else.  They get high off of it.  I've met it, I've chatted with it, and I've been made sick by my exposure to it, and at times, I worried I would develop it if around it too long (thankfully its been supposedly discovered that psychopathy is an inborn behavior, either by birth or by years of abusive/broken home upbringing, both of which I appear to lack.)  Having been around these, however, I pick up on these things in conversation, I pick up on changes in attitude, I pick up on hidden cues.  Maybe I spent too much time amongst the former soviets in my early formative years, and too much time on the east coast for the last of my formative years, but I have developed the ability to smell out a rat much more so than folks out here in the hinterlands.  As such, I can smell a psycho within a few hours of conversation.  I run into a lot of combat vets and army types, some of whom are tortured by their remorse for some of the evil crap they did, and some who are joyful by how many folks they killed or otherwise injured on behalf of whatever their excuse was.  Their excuses vary, but their joy at ruining someone else's day and "winning" at it is impossible for them to mask.

Sucks to be them and I would sympathize, I would even offer to help them.  However, within short order, their archist control freakish streaks become visible.  And this will continue to exist, until people take responsibility for their own safety, instead of annointing the control freaks and psychos to do their fighting for them.  Don't forget that more than a fair share of these are people who took great joy in killing others on orders and for no other reason.  Some tried to rationalize that "God told them to do it" or that "my country right or wrong" or whatnot.  In reality, they were simply being evil bastards, whether by willful gullibility or outright willful evil.

Until people change... nothing changes.

And for the Christians or outright "religious" folks amongst us... remember this line... I didn't memorize the verse, but here it is in its English iteration I learned as a kid:

"Your faith has healed you.  Now go, and sin no more." 

God might forgive you, but until you quit being an evil bastard, that forgiveness is temporary.  (Nobody says you can't make mistakes, but making mistakes is one thing, being a corrupt, murderous evil bastard is another.  Take Samuel's sons, "who didn't walk in Samuel's ways, and took bribes and rendered false judgments" in what is probably the single most scathing anti government passage in written history, where God tells Samuel that the Israelites shall be thoroughly punished for their stupidity, by getting the king they desired.) (Note: we aren't arguing accuracy of "god told" or "anecdotal evidence or hearsay" or whatever, the point is, the story is ACCURATE and OLD.)

Everyone says forgiveness.  Everyone demands punishment.  Everyone claims to want "justice," yet few amongst the mainstream remember or even accept the fact that the point of much of the old customary laws were to A, make the victim whole (restitution) and B, correction of wrongful behavior so as to maintain peace and contentedness within the local social group, be it tribe, hamlet, early encampment or whatever.  Punishment was simply for uncorrectable errors where restitution was impossible (murder, etc.)  It wasn't until the later "kings" (government/bandits) that punishment and official robbery (taxation) became the norm, and restitution and correction stopped. 

Now, I'm not saying and nobody else is, that those early societies were panaceas of freedom, but some of their concepts have been corrupted much as the "spare the rod, spoil the child" axiom has been.  Shepherds do not beat their sheep.  They correct them.  However, ask a Baptist what that means.  Punishment is the norm, correction by coercion, not by logic or gentleness.  Until we learn to behave that way, as in, STOP DOING EVIL SHIT... all that forgiveness stuff, all the prayers, all the tithing, all that is merely empty form.

I commend the folks at oath keepers, since they've got a hard fight and they're trying to ameliorate the evil.  Is it a drop in a bucket?  Possibly.  But sometimes a single drop overflows the bucket if its full enough.  And I'm seeing gradual changes in attitudes especially out here in the hinterlands, where overrreaching bastards are pushing hard... it sure will be Chinese interesting in time. 

Just hope we've all got time to get ready "enough" for it and that we survive it to make a real difference on the other side.

[da gooch]

I intended no criticism; it was an honest question.  I have reservations about OK but don't generally attack other people working for liberty. 

It seems to me that the threat has evolved, and I was curious how this would affect the OODA loop.  The OK  threat model seemed to be that soldiers might one day confront a choice about their response to a plainly unconstitutional order in the context of generally lawful orders.

Now one can argue there are no lawful orders, the government has lost any pretense of legitimacy, and rules by violence alone.  The threat has changed.  Responding to past threats in battle rarely works well.

Peace,

Silver

My response was not directed AT anyone Silver you or anyone else.
I do hope you can see that I was responding via the statement by Klapton and to one of the most common complaints heard by Oath Keepers since our inception.
"Where were you when ..." or "Why didn't you stop ...", et cetera ad infinitum.
(that said now please reread my post?)

I realize there is a lot of hate for the Constitution and for good reason. But if the problem isn't framed to restore the Constitution then a favorable outcome is very less certain.

Silver is asking what will Oath-Keepers do, what else can they do except keep on message?  To me that message is the real revolutionaries and usurpers are the present government.

The future battle space has to be sharply defined.  People won't understand anything else.

The threat has changed.

It is true that the "field has changed" but it matters not ... Yet ... as we are still fighting an uphill battle against the ignorance of the uneducated within the ranks.
Our mission remains the same and yet we also now have new "fields" upon which we can make advances.

Observe, adjust, adapt and overcome still applies and with some luck we may have been handed the key to a small chink in the armor of the monster.  Even an uneducated brand new recruit knows that spying on our own people is not "Freedom" oriented. And the more experienced should begin questioning such things as NorCom and the militarization of the local constabulary.
One can but continue the effort.

stay safe

[da gooch]

I sure can kill a thread it seems.

Or ... Maybe ... I answered your question Silver?

I was trying to answer it for you.

What will Oath Keepers do ...

IMHO - jamie has the gist of it.
IF we attempt to alter the "playing field" too much we will lose all of the military vets that have signed on in an effort to restore the Constitution and the [apparent] balance intended by it by the founding fathers.


[balance = the so called system of checks and balances]
Unfortunately that sort of self governance requires actual hands on participation by one and all.
"A Republic Madam IF You can keep it" B. Franklin

TPTB have for well over a century been slowly teaching the population that "We are the government, we're here to help you." when what they really mean is "lay down and shut up slave if I wanted your noise I would have asked for it."
In reality the Constitution is but a list of things We are not supposed to let government do. More of that "hands on participation" stuff that We have not done in way too long.

Jefferson suggested a revolution every twenty years to keep the Tree of Liberty hale and healthy.
I can see where a complete house cleaning on a regular basis would hamstring most of the tyrants efforts BUT that also requires "hands on participation" which most of the population has no knowledge of how to participate in and that appears to be by design.

Here again IMPO the Constitution hasn't worked because the population hasn't participated.
A completely voluntary association [or many groups in association] would be a better form BUT there are a great many people on this continent that have no concept of "Self Governance" so they will elect or crown a new King and go back to their TV and videos.

Baby steps, it seems, is the best we can hope for at this juncture.
YMMV

[Silver]

You answered my question, and I thank you for that.

I'm not sure I agree with the answer, but I'm really not knowledgeable to argue to the point very well.

I think I understand the concept of defining the future battlespace.  I can understand why that is important. But that option may not be always available, and it seems to have been preempted here.

While OK was organizing and building up defenses against illegal orders, the enemy tunnel beneath and made all orders illegal.  There is no longer a basis for the most conscientious OK member to make a distinction.  I don't see how anything in the OK platform addresses that horrific fact.

On a separate but related front, the OK leadership must know that any thought of opsec is gone.  Every word spoken on a telephone, every email, every letter, every credit card purchase by anyone remotely associated with OK (I fall well within the "3-steps of association" net they cast) has been recorded, filed, and very possibly scrutinized for the past decade.  The snoops may not have known at the time what they were looking for, but now they have the luxury to go back and re-create any trail they desire.

Not only do they go back, federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated.

Was that part of the original plans?  Did the OK leadership recognize that the very act of contacting a potential recruit would make the target and all of his family, friends, and associates, and their friends and associates perpetual "persons of interest?"  Are OK members prepared to defend themselves against a complete fabrication created by stitching bits of snooped data together with a skein of professionally vetted lies?  Are they comfortable with the fact that visiting the OK website or attending a meeting will mean that their wives, children, friends, everyone they know, and everyone who knows any one of them will get special attention?

Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) is reported to have written "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."  What kind of case can be built from 60,000 lines of stolen data gathered over many years?

Maybe the OKs are all way ahead of me.  Maybe everyone but me saw this coming.  I didn't.  I'm still in the process of understanding the magnitude of the betrayal, its consequences, and possible reactions.  A lot of my previous preparations and thinking aren't looking very useful to me right now.

Peace,

Silver

[Rarick]

Keep on passing the word around like they have always done.  It is up to individuals to use the information in ways they see fit.........

So many posts for such a simple concept.

[Klapton Isgod]

Not only do they go back, federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated.

Was that part of the original plans?  Did the OK leadership recognize that the very act of contacting a potential recruit would make the target and all of his family, friends, and associates, and their friends and associates perpetual "persons of interest?"  Are OK members prepared to defend themselves against a complete fabrication created by stitching bits of snooped data together with a skein of professionally vetted lies?  Are they comfortable with the fact that visiting the OK website or attending a meeting will mean that their wives, children, friends, everyone they know, and everyone who knows any one of them will get special attention?

Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) is reported to have written "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."  What kind of case can be built from 60,000 lines of stolen data gathered over many years?

Maybe the OKs are all way ahead of me.  Maybe everyone but me saw this coming.  I didn't.  I'm still in the process of understanding the magnitude of the betrayal, its consequences, and possible reactions.  A lot of my previous preparations and thinking aren't looking very useful to me right now.

Peace,

Silver

Most of the original discussions about forming OK happened here, on these forums.  One of the most interesting discussions was about what "membership" would actually mean.  In that thread the need to distance from / disavow people was discussed.  By the time the organization was officially founded, the bylaws explicitly forbade important things to keep us out of trouble.  We have had to disavow people several times since our founding.  The ability to state that certain people were never official members has helped.  The ability to oust people for doing things or making statements that are problematic has also helped.  Dyer, Kokesh, Kessler...  These are a few that come to mind that the organization has had to deny association with in order to protect the organization.

I too worry at times about things I have posted on the internet, that they could eventually be used against me in a witch hunt.  This is especially problematic for anyone who might consider running for public office as a means of change.  Tom Woods, for example, has been begged by many people to run for office.  His answer has been basically because he has used "the A-word" to describe himself, that he could never get elected.  Imagine how easy it would be to label him and extremist nutjob to the sheeple, because he has used the word "anarchist" to mean anything other than spoiled college kids who wear black and commit vandalism to shame their parents.

I saw a great video of Judge Napolitano at a Mises.org event, doing a Q&A after a speech.  Someone basically accused him of being an anarchist, and he just kind of paused and grinned and eventually said, "Do you hear me denying anything?"  But he was careful NOT to just come out and say it.

[Silver]

I'm familiar with the history, thank you for reviewing it.  So in some ways OK did anticipate some of the present mess.

Speaking strictly for myself, I have long thought about what I'll call plausible deniability, although that isn't quite the right word.  I too have thought that words I've written here and elsewhere might be used to hang me, or worse. 

But I resigned myself to the fact that the internet has an eidetic memory, and if I wanted to use it, I had to appreciate and respect both its power and its danger.

What I didn't fully appreciate was that every credit card transaction, phone call, email, or anything else that left any kind of electronic imprint at all was being hoovered up and stored.  It's one thing to defend yourself against trumped-up charges based on out-of-context quotes from internet posts.  In principle you can at least go to the source yourself and show the larger context of your words.  The OKs policy of disavowal is similar.  You can point to your policy, your actions, the public record.

Not with this data.  Peons have no access to it.  The thugs will lie in court about where they got it, and won't provide your side with access.  They can select, for example, home canning supplies purchased in 2006, fireworks in 2010, telephone calls to people who knew people who knew people who got disappeared from 2008 and 2011, articles about home-brew devices that were linked on web pages you viewed in 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2012, and so forth.

Put all of that in front of a judge or jury, topped with a pack of lies about how they had fingered you long ago and been painstakingly building their case since, and you are a dead man.  Worse than dead.

The truth is that any person on this planet can be convincingly portrayed as a monster by selecting the right bits from their past and weaving a story around it.  Our legal system calls the bits "evidence" and the story "the prosecution's case" and will eat every word with a spoon. 

There is no plausible deniability here.  I don't know the answer.  I'm still working on the questions.  But I am deeply concerned, for OKs, myself, and many, many others.  God help us all.

Peace,

Silver

P.S. I saw that performance by Judge Napolitano.  His speech and his response to questions after impressed me a lot more than his Fox TV show.  An interesting lesson/reminder of how the medium distorts the message.