Oath Keepers Founder, Stewart Rhodes on Fourth of July
Fourth of July Message From Oath Keepers Founder, Stewart Rhodes
http://oathkeepers.org/oktester/stand-vigilant-this-fourth-of-july-we-the-people-must-be-ready-willing-and-able-to-stop-terrorists-and-tyrants/
http://oathkeepers.org/oktester/stand-vigilant-this-fourth-of-july-we-the-people-must-be-ready-willing-and-able-to-stop-terrorists-and-tyrants/
In response to a Facebook post claiming that a Texas militia leader had been contacted by the FBI and instructed to alert militias, Oath Keepers, and three percenters to be ready and alert for possible terror attacks on July 4, Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes posted the following on Facebook:
Oath Keepers has not been contacted by any Federal agency or agents with a request for assistance. However, we all certainly should be on heightened alert, with our heads on a swivel this weekend and ready to protect ourselves, our families, and our fellow Americans if there is an attack. Frankly, we should all be doing that all the time, anyway, and that means going armed at all times so we are able to put a stop to an active shooter or shooters wherever, or whenever, they attack.
Anyone who is trained and competent with their weapons should have a rifle and a rifle bag or chest rig with sufficient loaded magazines in their vehicle, at the least, and also a pistol on their person, at all times. But not just this weekend, and not just because of any particular threat – because that is our standing duty, day in, day out, 24/7 and 365 days a year. We the People are the true first responders. That’s how we should all be, all the time. We don’t need the FBI to tell us that. Now, if some field agent is switched on and has a clue, that’s great. But we have not been contacted by any.
And for those who don’t trust the FBI, I think you are perfectly justified in not trusting them. The FBI has a long history of COINTELPRO and manipulation, including sending in agent provocateurs, confidential informants, and actual agents to stir people up, cause division, and otherwise just wreak havoc. I don’t trust that agency any more than I would trust the CIA or NSA. Are there individual agents who are on our side? Yes, there are. But unless you know them personally, and have some proof that they are on the side of the Constitution, I think your suspicion is healthy and more than justified. And if I see anything suspicious on the 4th, I will alert a local cop, not the FBI, since the damn FBI could be part of the suspicious activity. They have been caught several times grooming and handling would-be terrorists (some of whom likely only became wannabe terrorists because of some FBI agent or paid informant recruiting them and talking them into it). – Stewart Rhodes
Oath Keepers has not been contacted by any Federal agency or agents with a request for assistance. However, we all certainly should be on heightened alert, with our heads on a swivel this weekend and ready to protect ourselves, our families, and our fellow Americans if there is an attack. Frankly, we should all be doing that all the time, anyway, and that means going armed at all times so we are able to put a stop to an active shooter or shooters wherever, or whenever, they attack.
Anyone who is trained and competent with their weapons should have a rifle and a rifle bag or chest rig with sufficient loaded magazines in their vehicle, at the least, and also a pistol on their person, at all times. But not just this weekend, and not just because of any particular threat – because that is our standing duty, day in, day out, 24/7 and 365 days a year. We the People are the true first responders. That’s how we should all be, all the time. We don’t need the FBI to tell us that. Now, if some field agent is switched on and has a clue, that’s great. But we have not been contacted by any.
And for those who don’t trust the FBI, I think you are perfectly justified in not trusting them. The FBI has a long history of COINTELPRO and manipulation, including sending in agent provocateurs, confidential informants, and actual agents to stir people up, cause division, and otherwise just wreak havoc. I don’t trust that agency any more than I would trust the CIA or NSA. Are there individual agents who are on our side? Yes, there are. But unless you know them personally, and have some proof that they are on the side of the Constitution, I think your suspicion is healthy and more than justified. And if I see anything suspicious on the 4th, I will alert a local cop, not the FBI, since the damn FBI could be part of the suspicious activity. They have been caught several times grooming and handling would-be terrorists (some of whom likely only became wannabe terrorists because of some FBI agent or paid informant recruiting them and talking them into it). – Stewart Rhodes
ADDITIONAL FOURTH OF JULY MESSAGE FROM STEWART:
Right now the media is all abuzz about the threat of radical islamacists targeting Americans over the Fourth of July weekend. I am on my way to speak at Pastor Manning’s event at Gettysburg, and in the airport I just heard one “terrorism analyst” describe how easily a lone ISIS gunman, or small team of gunmen, with full auto weapons could attack crowds at gatherings, on congested bridges, subways, etc, and easily kill fifty or so Americans. He is right, but the reason it would be easy is because of the anti-gun conditioning and sheep-like mindset that causes most Americans to choose to go unarmed, and also, usually, totally untrained and unprepared to deal with any active shooter situation. They are conditioned to leave their security to the “professionals” – the police, DHS/FBI, National Guard, military, etc. that my good friend David Codrea calls the “Only Ones” – as in “the police and military are the only ones who should have guns.”
And when Americans leave their security to government sanctioned “Only Ones” they set themselves and their children up as unarmed victims – lambs for the slaughter who bleat in terror as they die, while waiting for a professional “sheep dog” to come to their rescue.
And we have seen it over and over in mass shootings – including the jihadist attack at Ft. Hood Texas, where even soldiers were mandated to go unarmed and were turned into sheep who had to be rescued by a civilian cop, or the Navy Yard shooting, where the gunman gained access because he worked there, and went on a murderous spree with a shotgun until he was finally shot down by responding officers – and at each and every school shooting – while the unarmed “sheep” wait for the sanctioned sheep dogs to arrive, they are slaughtered in such numbers as to make the attack a “success” in the eyes of the terrorists or crazy maniacs intent on going down in history with a big body count.
The bone-head obvious, simple fact is there are not enough armed “Only Ones” to protect all Americans at all times, and to actually stop them from being murdered, as they go disarmed through their day. Just won’t happen. The police will only be able to respond to an ongoing slaughter, at best. They will not stop it, except by some miraculous coincidence (which we have yet to see).
The church shooting in Charleston is but the latest example of what happens when there is an institutionalized, policy enforced disarmed victim zone. The gunman could COUNT on having unarmed, defenseless victims (and in part, thanks to the pastor himself, who actively supported denying people in church the ability to protect themselves).
And yet we are told over and over that going armed is “extreme” or “dangerous” or somehow evil. If it is so evil, why is it OK for the cops to be armed to the teeth, as they attempt to try to guess where the terrorists will attack this weekend?
We know the answer – because they are employees of the state. Because they are “only ones” and because the blood-dancers on the anti-gun left really CANNOT WAIT to jump in and dance in the blood of yet more slaughtered unarmed “civilians” so they can clamor for more restrictions on our rights, and more intrusive surveillance and hypermilitarized police.
I find it perverse, and sick, that on the eve of our celebration of Independence Day we are being told we must be completely dependent on “professional” guardians, and that the only answer to blood-thirsty murderers and terrorists is to give up even more of our liberty and further turn us into helpless sheep.
The obvious answer is that the Founders did not give us a nation of sheep, who are at the mercy of both the wolves and also at the mercy of the “sheepdog” guardians that history has too often shown are liable to become wolves themselves.
That is why I really don’t care for the “sheepdog” analogy so many military and police love to use. I understand the sentiment, and the commitment, and I too feel an obligation to protect those who are not capable of protecting themselves, but we are not supposed to be a nation of sheep. We are supposed to be a nation of citizen-soldiers, of THE MILITIA made up of all of We the People, trained in the arts of war, organized and equipped, and standing ready at all times and in all places to defend ourselves, each other, and our town, county, state, and nation.
Rather than a few armed “sheepdogs” sprinkled among a mass of unarmed sheep, where the relatively few wolves can pretty much guarantee they can slaughter many before they are stopped, visualize a mass of armed sheepdogs, with no disarmed and helpless sheep (except children, obviously), who can protect THEMSELVES and each other, who will always be on scene at a shooting, because there is no separation between the protectors and the protected. That is what a free nation looks like, and that is what a free people look like. And such a people cannot be preyed upon successfully by any wolves, whether they be “private” wolves or “public” wolves – be they terrorists or terrorizing tyrants.
And that is what we need to commit ourselves to being, this Fourth of July. You should all be armed, ready, willing, and able to defend liberty anywhere, anytime, against any threat, because that is what it means to be a free people, and that is what it means to be Americans.
.
As Robert A. Heinlein put it so well:
“The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness.”
Amen. That’s what it takes to stop terrorists in their tracks, and to stop tyrants in their tracks. Nothing else works.
So let us once again declare our independence from reliance on professional guardian “Only Ones” and independence from the servile, groveling, pathetic, weak and defenseless state of sheep-like dependence our would-be masters want us to accept. Tell them to go to Hell, and stand up, like men, and take your place among the powers of the earth, as a free and independent people. And let us secure the blessings of liberty for posterity.
God bless the Republic,
Stewart Rhodes
