A Gathering of Eagles

          The Democratic Party and mainstream media embrace of the Occupy movement illustrates that, when the cause suits them, the left likes to make a virtue out of protest.  From the left we often hear the refrain, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”  But, when conservatives dissent the left often unleashes a disparaging tirade.  We are called hate mongers, racists and even Nazis.  No better proof of this double standard can be found than the recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) titled, A Gathering of Eagles: Extremists Look to Montana.   

          Founded in 1971 as a civil rights law firm, the Southern Poverty Law Center originally fought racist groups and individuals and has a long history of fighting the Ku Klux Klan.  However, as those groups waned the SPLC sought new targets.  Today this far left organization denounces those who view the world differently with the zeal of Orwellian Thought Police.     

          Those labeled as extremists by the SPLC include such notable conservatives as Chuck Baldwin, Baptist pastor and Constitutionalist, Stewart Rhodes of Oath Keepers and James Wesley Rawles of Survivalblog.  I have followed the careers and writings of these individuals for years and I am confident that they are neither racist nor interested in harming anyone.  

          Included among “hate” organizations by the SPLC are such stalwart conservative Christian groups as the American Family Association, the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition. 

            Barry Goldwater said it best, “…extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!”  If being a born again Christian, Second Amendment supporter and believer in small government and Constitutional original intent makes you an extremist then count me in.

          Thoreau in Civil Disobedience stated that a very few men, whom he called patriots, martyrs and reformers, serve the state with their consciences and “so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.”  Conservatives, such as me, want to restore, not overthrow.  We are not revolutionaries, nor even disloyal.  By serving this nation with our consciences, we seek to uphold the original vision of the Founding Fathers.

          The Gathering of Eagles report is nothing more than a malicious attack on patriotic Americans.  The Southern Poverty Law Center did an admirable job in fighting racism and Nazism, but today they are demeaning that heritage with assaults on individuals and organizations whose only “crime” is dissent.