1
Chapter 18: Fourth Generation Warfare, The Patriot Militias, and the North-
Paul Strategy
The Christian Reconstructionists have proven that they can conceptualize what
they want to achieve, devise a theology and a follow-on strategy to achieve their goal,
devote resources to achieving their goal, and then implement their strategy. Thus,
starting in 1983, the Christian Reconstructionists conceived as part of their long-term
strategy to reconstruct America’s political, economic, and cultural systems consistent
with their interpretation of the Old Testament, the need to develop a Patriot militia force.
They worked with white supremacists to establish a network of Patriot militia units
based on the operational principles found in the seminal article on Fourth Generation
Warfare written by their own preeminent military strategist William S. Lind employed at
the Christian Right’s premier strategic think tank, the Free Congress Foundation. But
where does the militia fit into the Christian Reconstructionist’s strategy? The answer to
this question is related to the literature’s unasked question: how do the Christian
Reconstructionists actually plan to come to power? Answers to these two questions are
conceptually linked: the Patriot militias are the armed wing of the Christian Right
available to contest local territories when the federal government collapses due to a
catastrophic economic crisis.
Frederick Clarkson in his book Eternal Hostility rightly understood the twin nature
Christian Right threat when he wrote that the “threat posed by the Christian Right
comes not from a few extreme elements but from well-organized cadres, both political
and paramilitary, dedicated to overthrowing democracy” [emphasis added]. In other
words, Clarkson argued that both the Christian Right that we see and its paramilitary
2
forces, the Patriot militia, pose twin threats to America. Clarkson further noted that this
array of forces “seek to destabilize the normal functioning of government and society at
all levels, from the school board to the White House.” Clarkson noted that some “are
anti-abortion terrorists. Others seek to undermine or abolish the public schools. Others
seek armed theocratic revolution. Still others may be content to gain political power in
order to obtain control in the near future.” Clarkson closed his observations with the
directive that in order to defeat the Christian Right, following the advice of Sun Tzu, one
had to understand their strategy and formulate a counter-strategy that would defeat
theirs. Clarkson pointed out that the Christian Reconstructionists Gary North and David
Chilton had advocated 15 years earlier (in 1982) that their fellow co-religionists follow
Sun Tzu’s advice. 1
However, Clarkson’s analysis of the Christian Right’s strategy focused on their
efforts to gain power and control through the political system by exploiting ignorance of
their goals and modus operandi as well as through subterfuge, chicanery, and stealth.
His analysis did not extend to the role and function of the Patriot militia, nor did he
consider their alternative route to power: the collapse of America’s economy and its
concomitant loss of legitimacy. This part of the strategy has been followed since the
1980s and, as we shall see in this chapter, is the foundational strategy of the Tea Party
movement that was devised by Gary North and implemented by Ron Paul. At the end
of Chapter 17, William Lind’s strategic assessments for the Patriot militia highlighted the
confluence of military defeats and economic collapse leading to a crisis of legitimacy.
1
Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, Monroe, Maine:
Common Courage Press, 1997: 203-4.
3
These ideas are not only strategic assessments from Lind, but are consistent with Gary
North’s early writings and even Howard Phillips’ own forecast of how the Christian Right
would come to power. North is the Christian Right’s leading Christian libertarian
economist who believes the Federal Reserve System is evil and the gold standard a
panacea for all that ills American society. Gary North’s voluminous writings on the
collapse of the American economy are beyond the scope of this chapter.
This chapter is dedicated to demonstrating that the “central premise” of the
North-Paul strategy, indeed the central premise of the Christian Right’s strategy for
coming to power, is based upon a forecasted collapse of the Federal Reserve System
and the associated Wall Street banks and shadow banking system, namely, the hedge
funds and other financial entities that are either unregulated or loosely regulated. This
“central premise” is entirely consistent with assessments made by liberal or progressive
economists and financial analysts who see the Too Big To Fail and Too Big To Jail
financial behemoths as an “existential” threat to the American economy and democracy.
Christian Right strategists may be wrong in the particulars, but a future financial
collapse—the system-threatening severity of which is open to speculation—is almost
inevitable. What is the purpose of the Patriot militias? Their purpose is twofold: contest
the legitimacy of the federal government at the local level, and, restore order so that
their allies can take or keep power. In chapter 19, we will see how organizations like
the National Precinct Alliance, which sprang directly from Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential
campaign, aim to replace local Republican Party officials with “hard core” Ron Paul
Christian libertarians. The National Precinct Alliance’s purpose is to ensure that all
moderate or insufficiently conservative Republicans are driven out of elected office.
4
Also, from Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign developed Richard Mack’s Save Our
Sheriff and The Sheriff’s Project as well as Stewart Rhodes’ Oath Keepers. All three
organizations are dedicated to nullification, Tenth Amendment solutions, and contesting
the legitimacy of the federal government.
Economic Collapse in the Christian Right’s Mind
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann,
a Republican member of Congress and a long-time Christian Right activist, and Senator
Rand Paul all oppose the Federal Reserve System. Julie Ingersoll, an expert on
Christian Reconstructionism, linked their ideological view of the Federal Reserve
System to the organizational conjunction and combined influence of Christian
Reconstructionist libertarian economist Gary North (especially his book Honest Money),
Howard Phillips’ Constitution Party, and the John Birch Society. Ingersoll correctly
pointed out that in North’s 1986 book Honest Money that “North’s overarching schema
is that there is an impending social collapse which will provide the opportunity for
biblically-based Christians to exercise dominion by replacing existing humanistic
institutions with biblical ones.” 2
2
Julie Ingersoll, “Rand Paul and the Influence of Christian Reconstructionism,” Religion Dispatches, May
25, 2010, at
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/editorial/2679/rand_paul_and_the_influence_of_christian_re
constructionism__. Julie Ingersoll, “Better Dead Than ‘Fed’: Behind Palin’s Dig at ‘Unbiblical’ Fed,”
Religion Dispatches, November 14, 2010, at
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/3730/better_dead_than_%E2%80%98fed%E2%80%99:
_behind_palin%E2%80%99s_dig_at_%E2%80%98unbiblical%E2%80%99_fed. Julie Ingersoll, “The
Debt Ceiling Crisis and Biblical Economics,” Religion Dispatches, July 14, 2011, at
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/julieingersoll/4866/the_debt_ceiling_crisis_and_biblical_eco
nomics/.
5
In Honesty Money, after explaining numerous times why the Federal Reserve
System and fractional banking are unbiblical and fraudulent (see Chapter 6), North
wrote several times that God’s judgment, which is pro-revolution, will produce a
cataclysmic collapse of the American political-economic system. North claimed that the
unbiblical financial system will not be reformed “without a near-revolutionary crisis (the
judgment of God).” Only by putting all of “His principles in every area of life” can
Americans avoid “the judgment of collapse—militarily, economically, and perhaps even
medically (AIDS).” On the next page North wrote, “But God will not be mocked…. The
reform…may have to come through economic collapse.” Thirteen pages later North
wrote, “But God will not be mocked. There will come an opportunity for a new
beginning, after an international financial crisis of historically unprecedented
proportions.” Like a survivalist, North warned, “The reconstruction is more likely to
emerge from the rubble. Buy some gold and silver coins, some basic tools, some
durable consumer goods, some dehydrated foods, get out of debt, and pray. If you can,
more out of high-risk urban areas.” North warned, “this credit structure is going to
topple anyway.” Indicators of the impending collapse were mounting debt, inflation,
wage and price controls, a massive default on Third World debt and hyperinflation. 3
And, North, in some ways anticipating or influencing William S. Lind’s strategic
assessments of an impending systemic and legitimacy crisis, wrote in his 1986 book the
following scenario for coming to power: “First, the bankers and the politicians will
continue to try and make the present system work. This will make the present system
3
Gary North, Honest Money: Biblical Principles of Money and Banking, Fort Worth, TX: Dominion Press,
1986: 137, 138, 151, 141, 142, 139-40.
6
worse. Second, there will be a collapse in stages: inflation, then mass inflation, then
price controls, then tyranny, and finally a worldwide deflationary depression.... Third—
this is my hope and my prayer—people will at last decide that they have had enough
moral and legal compromise. They will at last decide to adopt a simple system of
honest money, along with competitive free market principles throughout the economy….
If the voters don’t experience this sort of repentance, then we will go through the same
destructive business cycles again: inflationary boom and deflationary bust.” 4 In
November 2013, North, ever the optimist, noted that the “Ponzi” scheme of the U.S.
economy would produce a “Great Default” on $205 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities. 5
Now, the view North expressed has been embedded in and circulated around
and shared by many on the right-wing for decades. Chip Berlet noted that North was a
featured speaker at a 1985 investment seminar which attracted such right-wing
luminaries as former Representative Ron Paul, Christian Reconstructionist political
organizer Howard Phillips, Jack Wheeler (of Reagan Doctrine fame), and Joel
Skousen. 6
Adele Stan, a longtime observer of the right-wing with a keen eye for details,
noted in her 1995 portrait of the triumvirate of the Christian Right—Paul Weyrich,
Richard Viguerie, and Howard Phillips—that it was Phillips who saw the Christian Right
coming to power through the economic calamity of hyperinflation. Stan wrote that
4
Gary North, Honest Money: Biblical Principles of Money and Banking, Fort Worth, TX: Dominion Press,
1986: 118.
5
Gary North, “Kotlikoff on Unfunded Federal Liabilities, 2013: $205 Trillion,” Gary North.com, November
15, 2013, at http://www.garynorth.com/public/11776.cfm.
6
Chip Berlet, “A New Generation of Witch-hunters,” circa 1985, Political Research Associates, at
http://www.publiceye.org/huntred/Hunt_For_Red_Menace-11.html.
7
Phillips ““predicts a ‘hyperinflationary depression’ due to the strains of the national debt
on the economy, which will ‘terminally undermine confidence in whoever controls the
presidency when it hits.’” 7 In a 2008 article that indirectly linked then Governor and vice
presidential candidate Sarah Palin to the Constitution Party, Adele Stan reported
Howard Phillips telling her in 1995: “‘I see an enormous financial crisis coming…. $5
trillion debt…. is going to lead, in my view, to an hyper-inflationary depression in the
United States which is going to terminally undermine confidence in whomever controls
the presidency when it hits.’” The purpose of the Constitution Party and its grassroots
networks was “‘to be able to pick up the pieces when it’s over.’” 8
In other words, North and Phillips foresee an economic crisis, or a series of
economic crises leading to a systemic crisis undermining the legitimacy of the federal
government. Out of that massive crisis, the Christian Right comes to power. Throw in
the almost inevitable violent conflict that could accompany such a massive economic
breakdown— secession leading to civil war or revolution—and you once again have
Fourth Generation Warfare meeting Civil War II, and the obvious necessity of having an
armed paramilitary wing of the movement. And, this reinforces the conclusion of
chapters 15 through 17—that the Patriot militias that developed in the mid-1990s were
largely the creation of the Christian Right and not the white supremacist Christian
Identity movement.
7
Adele M. Stan, “Power Preying,” Mother Jones, November 1995, at
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1995/11/house-god.
8
Addiestan, “Sarah Palin’s Party Loyalty,” The Media Consortium, September 2, 2008, at
http://www.themediaconsortium.com/reporting/2008/09/02/sarah-palins-party-loyalty/.
8
Gary North is not the only Christian Right leader or person who believes that the
United States is headed towards economic collapse. The idea is now ubiquitous on the
broad right-wing. As economist Paul Krugman noted in his essay, “Getting to Crazy,”
“Beyond that, voodoo economics has taken over the G.O.P. Supply-side voodoo—
which claims that tax cuts pay for themselves and/or that any rise in taxes would lead to
economic collapse—has been a powerful force within the G.O.P. ever since Ronald
Reagan embraced the concept of the Laffer curve.” 9 And, Amanda Marcotte writing at
the progressive AlterNet website insightfully noted: ““If you believe America isn’t really
America unless the Christian right runs it, it’s not a short leap to look to destroying the
system altogether.... They like to frame their claims that America will collapse if they
aren’t in charge as warnings. But really, a better word for what they’re doing is
‘threats.’” 10
Above and beyond the Christian Right’s opposition to the Federal Reserve
System and its support for gold (see Chapter 6), economic collapse signifies a period of
civil war, whether or not it is preceded by years of persecution against Christians.
Economic collapse is their way to power, dominion, and the reconstruction of America.
Chip Berlet noted that Christian Identity leaders promoted the Posse Comitatus,
a “loosely-knot survivalist movement” in which survivalists, a mixture of white
supremacists and non-racialists, stockpiled food, water, medical supplies, and
ammunition, often in isolated communities, in “anticipation of long-projected economic
9
Paul Krugman, “Getting to Crazy,” New York Times, July 15, 2011, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/opinion/15krugman.html?ref=opinion.
10
Amanda Marcotte, “Why the Christian Right Is Obsessed With the Collapse of Civilization,” AlterNet,
December 12, 2013, at http://www.alternet.org/belief/why-christian-right-obsessed-collapse-civilization.
9
or political collapse and racial rioting.” Sociologist Richard Mitchell’s ethnographic study
of survivalism as a rational reaction modern society encompassed such disparate
groups as “citizens’ militias, tax and anti-government protesters, racial separatists,
survivalists, and others.” Based on twelve years of participant observation and
collecting other public and movement data, Mitchell provided a socio-demographic
analysis of 248 survivalists. The mean age was 39, 89 percent male, 97 percent white,
and 74 percent married. Eighty-nine percent lived in urban or suburban areas and five
states—California, Illinois, Texas, New York and Ohio—accounted for 44 percent of the
survivalists, though all 50 states were represented. Not unrealistically given that the
data were collected during the last stages of the Cold War, 50 percent of the sample
were preparing for nuclear war; however, allowing respondents to prepare for more than
one catastrophe, Mitchell found that almost 38 percent were preparing for economic
collapse, 13 percent for civil unrest, 12 percent for political collapse, 11 percent for an
unspecified collapse, 10 percent for a social collapse, 9 percent for an authoritarian
state, and 7 percent for a moral collapse. Only 4 percent were preparing for the
“fulfillment of biblical prophecy.” Around 14 percent were waiting for an “alien
invasion.” 11
Mary Barker, writing at the Religion Dispatches website, noted that “Mormons
have a smidgen of the survivalist in them. They expect total political and economic
collapse, and are instructed to store what has come to be known as the ‘two-year
11
Chip Berlet, “Right Woos Left,” Political Research Associates, 1999, at
http://www.publiceye.org/rightwoo/rwooz9-07.html. James Coates, Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of
the Survivalist Right, New York: Hill and Wang, 1987. Richard G. Mitchell, Jr., Dancing at Armageddon—
Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002: 3 and 238-9.
10
supply’—a stock of water and imperishable food items to sustain them in the event of
(the imminent) catastrophe.”12
In the early 1990s, Jeremiah Films run by the Matrisciana family, while deeply
involved in promoting the anti-LGBT movement and attempting to hound President
Clinton out of office, promoted a film in 1993 “The Crash—The Coming Financial
Collapse of America, which comes in two versions, one with a secular doomsday
scenario and another with a special Christian cut featuring discussions of End Times
Biblical prophecy.” 13
In 1997, John Hagee, the leading proponent of Christian Zionism, published his
book Day of Deception which blended “antichrist prophecy, revisionist history, and New
World Order conspiracy theory.” According to Rachel Tabachnick’s analysis, “Hagee
claims that a coming economic crisis will be intentionally induced by an ‘unseen
government’ and a Rothschild owned Federal Reserve, paving the way for the fierce-
featured, gay, part-Jewish antichrist who will come to power when he rescues the world
economy.” 14
Also in the mid-1990s, an active duty Army chaplain with the Kansas City-based
Prophecy Club, then Major James F. Linzey, toured America touting his belief “that ‘The
12
Mary Barker, “Mitt, Moochers, and Mormonism’s ‘Other’ Legacy,” Religion Dispatches, September 21,
2012, at
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/6412/mitt%2C_moochers%2C_and_mormonism%
E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9Cother%E2%80%9D_legacy/.
13
Chip Berlet, “Part Two: Apocalyptic Millennialism and Contemporary US Right-Wing Movements,”
Public Eye magazine revised, April 15, 1999, at
http://www.publiceye.org/apocalyptic/Dances_with_Devils_2.html.
14
Rachel Tabachnick, “No Debate on Hagee?,” Talk to Action, June 8, 2008, at
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/6/8/223122/7849.
11
Rothschilds,’ and European bankers who all have Jewish names except for ‘The
Rockefellers,’ control the US economy through the Federal Reserve and are scheming
to bankrupt, and enslave through debt, the American middle class.”15 Then Colonel Jim
Ammerman, who ran the endorsing agency for chaplains for the Department of
Defense, was not only a major proponent of New World Order conspiracy theories, but
had influenced John Hagee and also touted his New World Order conspiracy theory
while touring the country in the 1990s for the Prophecy Club. 16
In November 2008, a Russian analyst with Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Igor Panarin, forecast that the financial crisis in the United States would lead to America
breaking up in civil war. The Russian analysis was promoted by the Drudge Report and
found some favor on the right-wing. 17
Glenn Beck, a converted Mormon then with his own highly-rated show on Fox
News, promoted “frequent warnings of impending economic collapse with his promotion
of gold, generally, and the precious metals retailer that sponsored his show, Goldline,
15
Bruce Wilson, “James F. Linzey Espouses anti-Semitic, White Racialist Conspiracy Theory,” Talk to
Action, June 10, 2009, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/6/10/17129/0387.
16
Rachel Tabachnick, “Col. Jim Ammerman, Apostle & New World Order Conspiracy Theorist,” Talk to
Action, June 22, 2009, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/6/22/115820/165.
Russia Today.com, ‟Professor Igor Panarin: When America fell to pieces the shouting was
17
outrageous,” November 26, 2008, at http://www.russiatoday.com/Art_and_Fun/2008-11-
26/Professor_Igor_Panarin_When_America_fell_to_pieces_the_shouting_was_outrageous_.html/print.
Robin Stringer, ‟Russian Professor Says U.S. Will Break Up After Economic Crisis,” Bloomberg,
November 24, 2008, at
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a3sayDZz.QKc&refer=us. The Drudge
Report, ‟Russian Analyst Predicts Decline and Breakup of USA,” November 25, 2008, at
http://www.drudgereport.com/flashrur.htm. J.R. Nyquist, “Chaos, Confusion, and Civil War,” March 13,
2009, at http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2009/0313.html.
12
specifically.” 18 On February 20, 2009, exactly one month after the first African American
president was sworn in, Beck’s “War Room” show suggested that the future of America
by 2014 under Obama was an economic collapse, violent tax revolts, and a racial civil
war. 19 Dinesh D’Souza’s awful movie, 2016, was premised on the idea that President
Obama’s re-election in 2012 would result in a “world four years from now…darkened by
the clouds of economic collapse, World War III (thanks to the wholesale renunciation of
our nuclear superiority) and a terrifyingly ascendant new ‘United States of Islam’ in the
Middle East.” 20
An author at The Examiner.com website, financed by The Anschutz Corporation,
a leading funder of Christian Right organizations and promoter of the Seven Mountains
doctrine, opined that America’s growing debt crisis driven by Medicare, Medicaid, Social
Security, and other social spending could lead to a significant economic crisis in the
United States as investors sell-off their U.S. treasury holdings. The author wrote that
“Such a global economic collapse could provide the perfect platform to introduce a One
World banking regulatory system which could usher in a One World currency, eventually
18
Kenneth P. Vogel and Lucy McCalmont, “Top radio talkers sell endorsements,” Politico, June 15, 2011,
at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/56997.html.
19
Glenn Beck, “Glenn Beck’s War Room,” Fox News, February 23, 2009, accessed March 24, 2009, at
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,498765,00.html.
20
Michael O’Sullivan, “2016: Obama’s America,” Washington Post, August 24, 2012, at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/2016-obamas-america,1230760/critic-review.html. Bill
Berkowitz, “Dinesh D'Souza Watches the Box Office Bucks Roll In While Slamming Michael Moore,” Talk
to Action, September 11, 2012, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2012/9/11/111340/950. Michael
Berkowitz, “‘2016: Obama’s America’: Save Your Money, Use Your Vouchers,” The Huffington Post,
August 29, 2012, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-berkowitz/2016-obamas-
america_b_1834317.html. Simon Maloy, “Fear And Loathing In 2016: Obama’s America,” Media Matters,
August 27, 2012, at http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/08/27/fear-and-loathing-in-2016-obamas-
america/189581.
13
bringing about a One World government with a One World dictator who would enforce a
One World religion, which is not going to be Christianity.” 21
Michael Lind writing at Salon demolished an economic article written by Philip
Klein, a senior editor at the Washington Examiner, also part of the Anschutz network of
publications, in which Klein argued “The Welfare State is Destroying America.” Klein
also promoted the misguided idea that Social Security and other social spending would
bankrupt America. Michael Lind noted that Klein’s essay, by no means the only such
essay, nor the most egregiously wrong essay, was indicative of “conservatives [who]
live in a fantasy world” and a “right-wing counter-culture [who] are brainwashed by
the…apocalyptic propaganda ground out constantly by the conservative media
establishment.”22
Rick Joyner, head of Morningstar Ministries and the Oak Initiative, the latter
organization one of the leading purveyors of anti-LGBT activities (and linked to pro-
Putin personnel and organizations 23) and an integral part in popularizing the New
Apostolic Reformation, in 2012 began “warning of an impending economic collapse that
is going to lead to martial law and a return to the barter system, and so he is urging his
21
Elizabeth Delaney, “As Europe tumbles, UK and US could soon face economic collapse,” Examiner,
May 6, 2010, at http://www.examiner.com/x-16044-Christianity--Politics-Examiner~y2010m5d6-As-
Europe-tumbles-UK-and-US-could-soon-face-economic-collapse. Bill Berkowitz, “Phillip Anschutz: The
Most Powerful Billionaire You Have Never Heard Of,” Talk to Action, August 31, 2011, at
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/8/31/113147/698.
22
Michael S. Lind, “From Social Security hysteria to ‘Obamacare’ madness, right-wing propaganda is
increasingly divorced from reality,” Salon, January 24, 2012, at
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/24/how_conservatives_lie_about_government/.
23
Bruce Wilson, “U.S. Pro-Coup Evangelicals Ally With Putin Inner Circle,” Truth Wins Out/Center Against
Religious Extremism, October 14, 2014, at http://www.twocare.org/pro-revolution-u-s-evangelicals-ally-
with-putin-inner-circle/.
14
viewers to stockpile both food and items of high trade value.”24 Joyner continued to
believe that America is “‘headed for serious tyranny’” and that “‘a time of martial law in
America’” is “‘almost certainly unavoidable.’” However, Joyner also had a “prophetic
vision” that “‘even if our present government collapsed, if we, as a nation, returned to
the Lord, it would be used for good and not evil.’” 25 In other words, if America “‘returned
to the Lord,’” then the New Apostolic Reformation could destroy the allies of Satan.
Retired Army LTG Jerry Boykin, an original member of the Army’s elite Delta Force and
the Delta Force commander in Mogadishu, Somalia (Black Hawk Down) and assistant
to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, works for the Oak Initiative and the
Family Research Council. He promotes the idea of a forthcoming economic collapse
leading to President Obama declaring martial law in pursuit of an Islamization of
America campaign. 26
The Southern Poverty Law Center interviewed Randi Shannon, a former
Republican candidate for Iowa Senate who dropped out of her Iowa primary race to
24
Kyle Mantyla, “How Rick Joyner Fed the Multitudes with Just One Dish of Casserole,” Right Wing
Watch, June 11, 2012, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/how-rick-joyner-fed-multitudes-just-one-
dish-casserole.
25
Kyle Mantyla, “Joyner: ‘Our Only Hope Is A Military Takeover,’” Right Wing Watch, October 1, 2013, at
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/joyner-our-only-hope-military-takeover.
26
Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield, New York: Nation Books, 2013: 99 and 125.
Josh Glasstetter, “Romney Met Thursday with Top Anti-Muslim Activist and Leading Backers of
Bachmann Witch Hunt,” Right Wing Watch, August 8, 2012, at
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/romney-met-thursday-top-anti-muslim-activist-and-leading-
backers-bachmann-witch-hunt. Brian Tashman, “Boykin Wonders if Obama is a Member of the Muslim
Brotherhood,” Right Wing Watch, July 18, 2012, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/boykin-
wonders-if-obama-member-muslim-brotherhood. Kyle Mantyla, “Boykin Exposes Obama’s Health Care
Conspiracy to Build His Brownshirt Army,” Right Wing Watch, October 29, 2010, at
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/boykin-exposes-obamas-health-care-conspiracy-build-his-
brownshirt-army. Rachel Tabachnick, “Transcript of Gen. Boykin’s ‘Marxism in America,’” Talk to Action,
January 13, 2011, at
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/1/13/94755/8617/Diary/Transcript_of_Gen_Boykin_s_quot_Marxis
m_in_America_quot_.
15
become a “senator” for the “Republic for the united States of America,” what the SPLC
claimed was the “largest anti-government ‘sovereign citizens’ group now operating” and
“one of the most influential sovereign citizens” group in the country. Shannon told Ryan
Lenz that the United States government was a corporation, it had gone bankrupt in
1933, and that currently “‘collapse is certain.’” Shannon told the SPLC that her group
would come to power when “‘this one implodes or fails.’” 27
Peter Schiff, a writer at the neo-Confederate libertarian LewRockwell website run
by Lew Rockwell, one of Ron Paul’s closest confidantes, wrote of a forthcoming Federal
Reserve-induced crash much worse than the 2008 crash: “And if Greenspan’s one year
at 1% rates helped trigger the crash we saw in ’08, imagine imagine [sic] what three
years and counting of Bernanke’s/Yellen’s 0% rates portends for the next crash.”28
In late 2011, the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report on the League of
the South, an organization that became increasingly racist over the years since it was
co-founded in 1994 by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., who claims he left the organization in
1996. Woods, is the developer along with Gary North of Ron Paul’s home school
curriculum (see Chapter 19). The SPLC reported that “Beginning in 2007, when its
national conference was titled ‘Southern Secession: Antidote to Empire and Tyranny,’
each year has seen further and more militant dedication to that idea. The theme in 2008
was ‘Surviving the Empire’s Collapse’—an idea of survivalist resistance that similarly
has since been echoed each year with increasing enthusiasm.” The SPLC noted that at
27
Ryan Lenz, “‘Sovereign Senator,’” Intelligence Report Spring 2013, Southern Poverty Law Center, at
http://www.splcenter.org/home/2012/spring/sovereign-senator.
28
Peter Schiff, “The Long and The Short of Gold Investing,” LewRockwell, January 3, 2014, at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/01/peter-schiff/on-track-for-the-next-crash/.
16
its national conference in July 2011 in Abbeville, South Carolina, “‘birthplace and
deathbed of the Confederacy,’” the “LOS continued in the same vein of preparing for the
day the federal government collapses and the South rises again.” The SPLC reported
that the LOS leadership encouraged conference attendees to buy gold and silver, likely
in an anticipation of a collapse of the Federal Reserve System, as well as learning gun
safety, and learning such survival skills as stocking a pantry, hunting and tracking, and
using shortwave radios instead of telephones. In March 2011, Michael Hill, the head of
the League of the South, encouraged Georgia members to stock up on assault rifles,
ammunition, tools to derail trains, and deer-hunting rifles with a scope. At the Abbeville
conference in 2011, Michael Tubbs, a former Special Forces demolitions expert
convicted in the 1990s on federal weapons charges and member of the Florida League
of the South, “told the national gathering to withhold loyalty from the federal government
and instead pledge allegiance to the Southern National Congress, a neo-Confederate
group focused exclusively on advancing a new secession through political means.
Tubbs’ presentation also included a seven-part strategy to ‘delegitimate’ the federal
government through the establishment of ‘organic local communities.’” 29
William Gheen, head of the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, one of the
major anti-immigrant groups that survived and drove anti-immigration policies into the
Tea Party movement, believed the Obama administration along with pro-immigration
29
Janet Smith and Ryan Lenz, “League of the South Rhetoric Turns to Arms,” Intelligence Report Winter
2011, Southern Poverty Law Center, at http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-
all-issues/2011/winter/the-league-of-the-south-takes-up-arms. Southern Poverty Law Center, “League of
the South,” http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/league-of-the-south. Euan
Hague and Edward H. Sebesta, “Neo-Confederacy and Its Conservative Ancestry,” pp. 23-49 in Euan
Hague, Heidi Beirich and Edward H. Sebesta, editors, Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction, Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2008: 47 footnote 81.
17
reform Republicans and Democrats, were going to legalize undocumented immigrants
so that they could out-vote conservatives, expand the welfare state, and collapse the
economy in order for Mexico to reclaim the southwest portion of the United States. 30
Erik Rush, the African African enabler of white racism who writes at the
WorldNetDaily website, claimed in a video that “President Obama is a longtime
communist who is working to transform America into a communist utopia through
income redistribution and by collapsing the economy by implementing socialized
medicine…. In fact, Obama is intentionally working to destroy the economy in order to
benefit banks and investment firms, which will somehow make billions of dollars by
seeing the entire economy collapse.” 31 Rush also claimed that “‘Taxation and
thousands of regulations concocted as fiat law by unconstitutional federal agencies
have become more and more ideology-driven and tyrannical.’” 32 These comments must
be viewed in the context discussed in Chapter 14 in which many Christian Right leaders
claimed that Obama was seeking to grossly violate the First and Second amendments
and enslave white Christian males—an apocalypse consistent with the John Birch
Society and the Patriot movement’s New World Order conspiracy theory.
Economic Collapse—The Inherent Instability of American Finance Capitalism
30
Brian Tashman, “William Gheen Exposes Immigrant Plot to Collapse Economy, Break America Apart,”
Right Wing Watch, January 8, 2014, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/william-gheen-exposes-
immigrant-plot-collapse-economy-break-america-apart.
31
Kyle Mantyla, “‘Perhaps America Will Throw This Marxist Out Of Office And Imprison Him For
Treason,’” Right Wing Watch, January 9, 2014, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/perhaps-
america-will-throw-marxist-out-office-and-imprison-him-treason.
32
Brian Tashman, “Erik Rush: Americans Must ‘Go To Any Length’ To Stop ‘Evil’ Obama,” Right Wing
Watch, January 9, 2014, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/erik-rush-americans-must-go-any-
length-stop-evil-obama.
18
However, while the reader may dismiss the idea that a future economic collapse
would bring the Christian Right to power, especially when that economic collapse is
enveloped in religious or secular variants of New World Order conspiracy theories, the
reality is that the American financial system is prone to periodic collapses. Reputable
progressive or liberal economists are deeply concerned that the present financial
system, in which the Federal Reserve System provides Wall Street banks and the
shadow banking system nearly cost-free money to fuel financial bubbles and sell
complex financial instruments which no one fully understands with virtually little or no
regulatory oversight and penalties for illegal behaviors, could cause a future
catastrophic crash. A future financial collapse of the American economy is an almost
virtual certainty—a collapse that would threaten the very economic well-being of every
American and shake the foundations of the political system. One can argue whether a
right-wing movement or a left-wing movement would come to power in such a set of
circumstances, but to argue that an economic collapse is not forthcoming is to have
much more confidence in the sanity and competence of federal regulators, Wall Street
bankers, and hedge fund managers than reputable economists, financial analysts, and
philosophers are willing to grant them.
In 2009, as various plans to reform the financial sector were being debated, a
number of economists and financial analysts forecast that unless there were major or
robust reforms of Wall Street—making the banks much smaller, separating traditional
banking from the casino operations of their investment banks, and prosecuting the
massive fraud in the financial industry—then another massive financial crash could
occur.
19
Economist Paul Krugman suggested that if the much more modest reforms
contemplated failed, then “we’ll have set the stage for an even bigger financial disaster
a few years down the road…. involve[ing] the financial industry as a whole.” 33 Peter
Boone and Simon Johnson warned, “Our banks have gotten into the habit of needing to
be rescued through repeated bailouts. During this crisis, [Federal Reserve chairman]
Bernanke—while saving the financial system in the short term—has done nothing to
break this long-term pattern; worse, he exacerbated it. As a result, unless real reform
happens soon, we face the prospect of another bubble-bust-bailout cycle that will be
even more dangerous than the one we’ve just been through.” 34
Russell Roberts, a conservative professor of economics at George Mason
University and a fellow at Stanford University Hoover’s Institution, noted that the three
decades long policy of the Federal Reserve saving the banking system from its own bad
behavior is dangerous. Russell wrote, “For the sake of democracy and capitalism, we
need to find another way.” 35 Robert Reich, a professor of economics at the University
of California, Berkeley, warned, “Yet without substantial reform, the nation and the world
will almost certainly be plunged into the same crisis or worse at some point in the not-
too-distant future.” 36 In late 2009, Simon Johnson told Bill Moyers, “It’s a three, five,
33
Paul Krugman, “The Joy of Sachs,” New York Times, July 17, 2009, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/opinion/17krugman.html.
Peter Boone and Simon Johnson, ‟The Next Financial Crisis,” The New Republic, September 8, 2009,
34
at http://www.tnr.com/article/economy/the-next-financial-crisis.
35
The Editors, “Why Wall Street Reforms Have Stalled,” RoomForDebate blog, New York Times,
September 11, 2009, at http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/why-wall-street-reforms-
have-stalled/.
36
Robert Reich, “The Continuing Disaster of Wall Street, One Year Later,” The Huffington Post,
September 14, 2009, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-continuing-disaster-
o_b_285578.html.
20
seven, maybe twelve year cycle. But when it comes back, it will come back with a
vengeance. And it will be even, I think, even more devastating, in all likelihood, than
what we just saw.” 37
In 2010, the prognosis of future economic calamity continued. Simon Johnson
warned in January, “we are setting ourselves up for an enormous catastrophe.” 38 He
and Peter Boone wrote later that month, “Rather than recognizing the dangerous
systemic failures in our financial system, their leaders are proposing bandages that
can—at best—only postpone another, possibly much larger, meltdown. There is
growing recognition that our financial system is running a doomsday cycle.” 39 Frank
Rich noted, “And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is
guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more
incentive than ever to pump up its risks—secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we
get stuck with the losses…. That’s the ticking-bomb scenario that truly imperils us all.” 40
In 2010 and 2011, Simon Johnson warned of the great danger that Too Big To Save
meant for the United States. In the 2010 article he warned “If the Dimon’s bigger, more
global, and greatly interconnected JP Morgan Chase is still dancing next time the music
stops, the choice will not be bailout vs. great recession. The real choice will be no
Bill Moyers, ‟Journal,” Public Broadcasting System, October 9, 2009, at
37
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10092009/watch.html.
38
Simon Johnson, “Simon Johnson: We’re Setting Ourselves Up For A Big Catastrophe, ‘Crisis Is Just
Beginning,” The Huffington Post, January 7, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/07/simon-
johnson-the-financi_n_414662.html.
39
Peter Boone and Simon Johnson, “A bank levy will not stop the doomsday cycle,” Financial Times,
January 19, 2010, at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e118fcc2-0461-11df-8603-00144feabdc0.html.
40
Frank Rich, “The Other Plot to Wreck America,” New York Times, January 9, 2010, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/opinion/10rich.html.
21
choice at all: fiscal disaster through attempted bailout (Ireland), or fiscal disaster through
economic collapse (Iceland).” 41 In 2011, Johnson told the Congressional Oversight
Panel on the Troubled Assets Relief Program, that if a Too Big To Save bank
threatened to pushed the U.S. Government near to fiscal default, the “fiscal damage to
the United States in that scenario would be immense, including through the effect of
much higher long term real interest rates. It remains to be seen if the dollar could
continue to be the world’s major reserve currency under such circumstances. The loss
to our prestige, national security, and ability to influence the world in any positive way
would presumably be commensurate.” 42
Alan Blinder, former vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board and professor of
economics at Princeton University, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “Without major
financial reform, ‘it’ can happen again…. If financial reform receives the same treatment
[as health care reform], we are in deep trouble, both politically and substantively.” 43
Paul Krugman warned again in early 2010 that another financial crash could occur:
“From the late 1970s on, the American financial system, freed by deregulation and a
political climate in which greed was presumed to be good, spun ever further out of
41
Simon Johnson, “Jamie Dimon: Becoming Too Big To Save—Creating Fiscal Disaster,” Baseline
Scenario, December 3, 2010, at http://baselinescenario.com/2010/12/03/jamie-dimon-becoming-too-big-
to-save/.
42
Simon Johnson, “‘A Healthy Financial System Cannot Be Built On The Expectation Of Bailouts,’”
Baseline Scenario, March 4, 2011, at http://baselinescenario.com/2011/03/05/a-healthy-financial-system-
cannot-be-built-on-the-expectation-of-bailouts/.
Alan S. Blinder, ‟When Greed Is Not Good,” The Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2010, at
43
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652242436408008.html?mod=rss_opinion
_main.
22
control…. Sooner or later, this runaway system was bound to crash. And if we don’t
make fundamental changes, it will happen all over again.” 44
Marshall Auerback writing at the NakedCapitalism website described the financial
industry reforms as pathetic and inadequate, thereby implying that another financial
catastrophe was inevitable: “The legislative and regulatory responses have been
pathetic on the part of Congress, Treasury, the SEC, and the President himself, none of
whom have the guts to introduce genuinely tough measures to target the break-up of
today’s destructive financial behemoths and restrict the range of activities that created
the crisis in the first place. Potemkin-like reforms and pinprick tax increases do not
solve the problem.” 45 Edward Harrison, also writing at Naked Capitalism, viewed the
Obama administration’s neo-liberal policies promoting Wall Street objectives pursued by
Clinton administration retreads as supporting evidence of his conclusion that “I see
another crisis as likely—and given the fragility of the economic environment, this crisis
will be a killer economically (and politically for Obama).”46
Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve System and advisor to
President Obama warned that “structural issues,” specifically making banks smaller and
ending government guaranteed bailouts were necessary to protect the U.S. economy.
Volcker noted that financial collapse in 2008 was “the most serious crisis in 75 years.”
Volcker warned that absent structural changes in the financial industry, “As things
44
Paul Krugman, “Bankers Without a Clue,” New York Times, January 15, 2010, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15krugman.html.
45
Marshall Auerback, “Geithner, Fix the Problem, Don’t Fake It,” Naked Capitalism, January 17, 2010, at
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/01/geither-fix-the-problem-dont-fake-it.html.
Edward Harrison, ‟Obama: grading his first year’s economic performance,” Naked Capitalism, January
46
19, 2010, at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/.
23
stand, the consequence will be to enhance incentives to risk-taking and leverage, with
the implication of an even more fragile financial system. We need to find more effective
fail-safe arrangements.” 47
Fox News reported that the Inspector General’s report for the Troubled Asset
Relief Program had concluded that the “government's bailout of financial institutions
deemed ‘too big to fail’ has created a risk that the United States could face a worse
fiscal meltdown in the future.” They quoted Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general,
describing America’s financial system as an even faster automobile travelling along the
same winding mountain road. 48
Nouriel Roubini, who foresaw the 2008 financial crisis, noted that the zero
interest rate was fueling economic growth as well as the next bubble leading to the next
financial crisis. In fact, Roubini noted that the financial system was increasingly prone
to collapse: “‘In practice, we have seen that things should have happened once every
one hundred years are becoming much more frequent and are much more virulent. The
economic cost, job losses, and the fiscal cost of these crises have become larger and
larger…. But when you can borrow everywhere in the world at a zero rate, and you can
take leverage, the risk of creating the next asset bubble...that significant risk is rising….
47
Paul Volcker, “How to Reform Our Financial System,” New York Times, January 30, 2010, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/opinion/31volcker.html.
48
Fox News, “Watchdog: Bank Bailouts Created More Risk in System,” January 31, 2010, at
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/31/watchdog-bailouts-created-risk/.
24
We are building the foundations of the next bubble that could lead—not next year, but
down the line in the next two or three years—to the next crisis.’” 49
Ellen Brown, champion of a publicly owned Federal Reserve Bank and publicly
owned state banks, noted that Wall Street bankers were essentially “deficit terrorists”
since they controlled the money supply and could force governments to repay the debts
while gouging their citizens out of public services. Brown described the “business cycle”
as “bank loans are now virtually the only source of new money in the economy, the
interest can only come from additional debt. For the banks, that means business
continues to boom; while for the rest of the economy, it means cutbacks, belt-tightening
and austerity. Since more must always be paid back than was advanced as credit,
however, the system is inherently unstable. When the debt bubble becomes too large
to be sustained, a recession or depression is precipitated, wiping out a major portion of
the debt and allowing the whole process to begin again.” 50
James K. Galbraith, wrote that the next financial crisis—aided and abetted by
economists who exclude fraud from their economic analyses and the Obama
administration failing to prosecute systemic fraud in the financial industry—posed an
“existential threat” to the United States. According to Galbraith, “The true alternative is
a failure extending over time from the economic to the political system. Just as too few
predicted the financial crisis, it may be that too few are today speaking frankly about
49
Nouriel Roubini, “‘We Are Building the Foundations Of The Next Bubble,’” The Huffington Post, May 11,
2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/11/nouriel-roubini-we-are-bu_n_571344.html.
50
Ellen Brown, “Deficit Terrorists Strike in the United Kingdom: United States of America Next?,” The
Huffington Post, June 17, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/deficit-terrorists-
strike_b_615813.html.
25
where a failure to deal with the aftermath may lead. In this situation, let me suggest, the
country faces an existential threat. Either the legal system must do its work. Or the
market system cannot be restored. There must be a thorough, transparent, effective,
radical cleaning of the financial sector and also of those public officials who failed the
public trust.” 51 William K. Black, a former regulator during the Reagan administration
and expert on deliberate “controlled fraud,” argued that “fraudulent CEO’s drove the
crisis” and that allowing them to run their banks without fear of criminal prosecution
“guarantees recurrent, intensifying financial crises.” 52
After financial reform legislation was passed in the Senate by a 59 to 39 vote,
two Democratic Senators who voted against the bill warned that the legislation that
would be known by the shorthand “Dodd-Frank” had done nothing to prevent a future
economic crash. Said Senator Russ Feingold, “‘The bill does not eliminate the risk to
our economy posed by ‘too big to fail’ financial firms, nor does it restore the proven
safeguards established after the Great Depression, which separated Main Street banks
from big Wall Street firms and are essential to preventing another economic
meltdown…. The bill should have included reforms to prevent another such crisis.
Regrettably, it did not.’” Senator Maria Cantwell lamented, “‘But the fact of the matter is,
without key reforms in derivatives trading, this bill does not safeguard America's
economy from a repeat of this crisis. It sets up a process for responding the next time
51
James K. Galbraith, “Why the ‘Experts’ Failed to See How Financial Fraud Collapsed the Economy,”
AlterNet, May 15, 2010, at http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146883.
52
William K. Black, “The Peril of Obama’s ‘Man Crush’ on Geithner Is Exposed by the Debate,” The
Huffington Post, October 5, 2012, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/obama-geithner-man-
crush_b_1942178.html.
26
we have a financial crisis, but it doesn’t prevent this kind of thing from ever happening
again.’” 53
Robert Reich noted that the Senate’s financial reform bill “does nothing to
change the structure of Wall Street” meaning that the largest banks will continue to grow
larger relative to the U.S. economy, there is no separation of commercial banking from
casino-like investment banking, and forcing banks to do their derivative trading in an
entity separate from their commercial banking. Reich warned that “Wall Street’s big
banks are just too big, and their ability to draw on commercial deposits for investment
banking activities, including derivatives, will make them even bigger. It will also subject
the economy to greater and greater risks in the future. No amount of regulation can
cure that.”54 And Gretchen Morgenson, the excellent financial writer at the New York
Times noted, “Yet despite all that verbiage [3,000 pages of text combined in the House
and Senate bills], there are flaws in both bills that would let Wall Street continue
devising financial black boxes that have the potential to go nuclear. And even if the
best of both bills becomes law, investors, taxpayers and the economy will remain
vulnerable to banking crises.” 55
The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Thomas Hoenig,
believed separating derivatives trading from commercial banking was “‘of utmost
53
Associated Press/The Huffington Post, “Senate Passes Financial Reform Bill, 59-39,” May 20, 2010, at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/20/senate-clears-way-for-fin_n_583802.html.
54
Robert Reich, “Why The Finance Bill Won’t Save Us,” The Huffington Post, May 24, 2010, at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-the-finance-bill-wont_b_587427.html.
Gretchen Morgenson, ‟3,000 Pages of Financial Reform, but Still Not Enough,” New York Times, May
55
28, 2010, at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/business/30gret.html.
27
importance to our nation’s long-term financial and economic stability.’” 56 Charles
Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, told a Chamber of
Commerce audience, that the financial reform package would not prevent a future
economic crisis: “The recent crisis and actions by policymakers have exacerbated moral
hazard and expanded the safety net for failing firms. This is a huge problem that if not
adequately addressed will sow the seeds of the next crisis.” 57 In other words, Too Big
To Fail banks would continue to take inordinately large risks knowing that their huge
financial losses would be borne by the American taxpayers—the essence of moral
hazard.
Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas argued that
proposals to regulate the largest Wall Street financial institutions or to have legislation to
resolve them into receivership were completely inadequate because “Banks that are
TBTF are simply TB—‘too big.’ We must cap their size or break them up—in one way
or another shrink them relative to the size of the industry.” Fisher told the young
bankers’ audience, that “public policy—not the competitive market place” created “ever
larger banks [that] have come to dominate the financial landscape. And, absent
fundamental reform, they will continue to do so. As a result of public policy, big banks
have become indestructible.” Fisher observed that the increasing size of the Wall Street
56
Shahien Nasiripour, “Top Fed Official Supports Restricting Banks’ Derivatives Bets, Goes FURTHER
Than Obama,” The Huffington Post, June 10, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/10/thomas-
hoenig-derivatives-banks_n_608297.html.
Charles I. Plosser, ‟Economic Outlook,” Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, June 11, 2010, at
57
http://www.philadelphiafed.org/publications/speeches/plosser/2010/06-11-10_blair-county-chamber-of-
commerce.cfm. Shahien Nasiripour, “Another Fed Official Says Senate Bill Doesn’t End ‘Too Big To
Fail,’” The Huffington Post, June 11, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/11/another-fed-
official-says_n_609110.html.
28
banks was correlated with higher risks and greater threats to the financial and economic
system. According to Fisher, “The system has become slanted not only toward bigness
but also high risk…. It is not difficult to see where this dynamic leads—to more
pronounced financial cycles and repeated crises…. The dangers posed by institutions
deemed TBTF far exceed any purported benefits. Their existence creates incentives
that will eventually undermine financial stability. If we are to neutralize the problem, we
must force these institutions to reduce their size.” 58 And, Paul Volcker who supported
ending “Too Big To Fail” banks observed that the House-Senate legislation’s regarding
a “resolution authority” outside of normal bankruptcy channels did not apply to the
largest Wall Street banks. 59
Even an analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute noticed that Too Big To Fail
financial institutions and a financial collapse could endanger the United States as a
country: “We are in an ever-increasing cycle of risk-taking and too-big-to-fail bailouts
going back decades. Now we know that bank holding companies, insurance
companies, and investment banks are too big to fail in the government’s eyes and their
activities are not going to be fundamentally restricted in size and scope. This crisis
strained the fiscal limits of the United States to make good on bailout expectations. The
next one will be bigger…. We do know this: when the government no longer has the
fiscal resources to bail out its financial institutions, the crisis will be much, much worse.
58
Shahien Nasiripour, “Richard Fisher, Top Fed Official: Too Big To Fail Lives On, Only Way Out Is To
Shrink Megabanks,” The Huffington Post, June 4, 2010, at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/04/too-big-to-fail-lives-on-richard-fisher_n_600133.html.
59
Shahien Nasiripour, “Volcker: New Government Powers Won’t Be Able To Dismantle Megabanks; Too
Big To Fail Lives Despite Reform Bill,” The Huffington Post, June 15, 2010, at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/15/volcker-new-government-po_n_612392.html.
29
Iceland can happen in the United States if we do not get this right.” 60 And Arnold Kling,
another libertarian economists essentially agreed with the Simon Johnson and James
Kwak thesis of their book 13 Bankers that to prevent the continuation of a political
oligarchy derived from their ever increasing share of the country’s wealth and income
which contributes a disproportionate amount of political donations and political lobbying
into the political system, it was necessary to break up the biggest banks. 61
Anat Admati, a professor of economics and finance at Stanford University’s
Graduate School of Business, noted in 2013 that five years after the collapse of Lehman
Brothers triggered the financial crisis in 2008, “we are no safer. Huge, complex and
opaque banks continue to take enormous risks that endanger the economy.” 62 And
Gretchen Morgenson reported that both the Financial Stability Board and the Financial
Stability Oversight Council, which was created under the Dodd-Frank legislation, both
believed that the shadow banking system, or, what she called “nonbank financial
institutions”—with $53 trillion in assets under management—should be given greater
regulatory scrutiny because some of these institutions, those with managing $100 billion
or more in assets, posed a systemic risk to the U.S. economy—a view not shared by the
industry. Morgenson noted that during the 2008 financial crisis that money market
60
John H. Cochrane, “Lessons from the Financial Crisis,” Regulation, Winter 2009-2010, Cato Institute, at
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv32n4/v32n4-6.pdf, page 37.
61
Arnold Kling, “Baseline Scenario: The Book,” Library of Economics and Liberty, March 11, 2010, at
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/03/baseline_scenar.html.
62
Anat R. Admati, “We’re All Still Hostages to the Big Banks,” New York Times, August 26, 2013, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/opinion/were-all-still-hostages-to-the-big-banks.html.
30
funds were given emergency insurance by the Federal Reserve System to prevent the
equivalent of a bank run. 63
The Bank of International Settlements—the central bank of the central bankers—
warned in mid-2010 that the worsening balance sheets of central governments
combined with an economic crisis could be catastrophic. According to The
Independent, a British newspaper’s summary, “But the BIS report implies that
governments may not be able to repeat such a bailout in the event of a second crisis,
which some commentators fear could be triggered by another economic shock…. The
BIS also warned that the ‘fragility’ of public and private balance sheets in the UK,
France, Germany, Spain and the US ‘severely limits the scope for fiscal policy
intervention if another bailout is needed.’” 64 And William White, the retired chief
economist for the BIS who forecast the financial crisis of 2008, implied that another
financial crisis could occur because the central banks exert less control over their
respective national financial systems than they may recognize. 65
Writing in January 2014 in the New York Times, Eduardo Porter reported that the
American Bankers Association had sued to stop the Dodd-Frank’s Volker Rule from
taking effect and that “almost half the rules required by the Dodd-Frank legislation have
yet to be written. But the financial industry would love to slow regulation further.”
63
Gretchen Morgenson, “Bailout Risk, Far Beyond the Banks,” New York Times, January 12, 2014, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/business/bailout-risk-far-beyond-the-banks.html.
Sam O’Grady and James Moore, ‟Britain ‛might not cope with another bank emergency,’” The
64
Independent (UK), June 29, 2010, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/britain-might-
not-cope-with-another-bank-emergency-2013049.html.
65
Beat Balzli and Michaela Schiessl, “The Man Nobody Wanted to Hear. Global Banking Economist
Warned of Coming Crisis,” Der Spiegel, July 8, 2009, at http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-
man-nobody-wanted-to-hear-global-banking-economist-warned-of-coming-crisis-a-635051.html.
31
Meanwhile, under pressure from Wall Street the Securities and Exchange
Commission’s rule-making “has largely stopped.” 66
The financial system has become so complex and inter-connected, and thereby
fragile, that the causes of the next crash vary widely. However, a more critical
epistemological critique asserts that the very basis of economics is at its root an
epistemological failure.
Nassim Taleb, one of the most challenging philosophers of science, and a former
derivatives trader, wrote in The Black Swan that a “small number of Black Swans
explain almost everything in our world.” A Black Swan event is extremely rare, has a
very large impact, we develop post-hoc explanations to make them predictable, but we
also believe that Black Swans do not exist. Even worse, neo-classical economic
models which govern the modern economy are either oblivious to the catastrophic
outlier of a Black Swan event or blatantly disregard a Black Swan event in the models. 67
In other words, the cause of the next financial crisis, if not financial collapse, is
epistemological since economic theories which drive Wall Street and shadow banking
investment strategies does not account for an unpredictable Black Swan event that has
an unknowable probability of occurring but, if it does occur, could be catastrophic.
Yves Smith in her book ECONned, building upon Taleb’s insights, discussed the
“scientific pretenses of economics,” assumptions so unrealistic that they amount to “a
66
Eduardo Porter, “Recession’s True Cost Is Still Being Tallied,” New York Times, January 22, 2014, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/business/economy/the-cost-of-the-financial-crisis-is-still-being-
tallied.html.
67
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan—The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York: Random
House, 2010: xxii and 277-285.
32
‘get out of reality free’ card,” and that neo-classical (libertarian) economics amounts to
“radicalism masquerading as science.” Moreover, when it came to models used to
direct investment strategies (effectively casino gambling), “the whole edifice of modern
finance, even the mundane sort that retail investors use to manage their portfolios, is
rotten.”68
Nevertheless, the hunt for the cause of the next financial crisis, without adequate
understanding of what caused the last financial crisis, continues unabated.
Jeffrey Sachs, for example, warned that through increasing deficits—federal and
state governments, Medicare and Medicaid expenditures combined with tax cuts for the
rich and the middle class—we will end up with a much deeper fiscal crisis—“the kind
where the dollar collapses, foreigners stop buying Treasury bills and public services
collapse while inflation soars.” 69 Janet Tavakoli, an expert on complex financial
instruments, warned that global trading in credit default swaps on the United States
payable only in gold “will foment distortions in global currencies and gold.” Tavakoli
warned, “If this speculation drives up the price of gold, and the available gold supply
becomes limited, are you willing to post your children as collateral? I am pushing the
point so that we put a stop to this before it is too late.”70 Some Wall Street analysts
were concerned that corporate debt instruments that had been transformed into
68
Yves Smith, ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted
Capitalism, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010: 46, 48, 65, and 87-8.
69
Jeffrey Sachs, “How to Tame the Budget Deficit,” The Huffington Post, February 18, 2010, at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/how-to-tame-the-budget-de_b_467214.html.
70
Janet Tavakoli, “Washington Must Ban U.S. Credit Derivatives as Traders Demand Gold,” The
Huffington Post, March 8, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/washington-must-ban-us-
cr_b_489778.html.
33
derivatives could trigger a financial crisis between 2012 and 2015. 71 Rick Bookstaber
suggested that the municipal market for derivatives could prompt the next financial
crisis. Bookstaber thought “Once a few municipalities default, there is a risk of a
widespread cascade in defaults because the opprobrium will be lessened, all the more
so if the defaults are spurred along by a taxpayer revolt—democracy at work.” 72 Dan
Froomkin reported that shortfalls in state and local governments’ public pensions could
trigger another financial crisis. 73 Scott Thill reported that Wall Street investment firms’
use of super-fast computers, sophisticated algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence might
be able to “Flash Crash” an economy before humans could intervene. 74 Other financial
analysts thought that growing state indebtedness could trigger a financial crisis. 75
Thus, not only do reputable economists, both liberal and conservative, forecast a
future economic crisis that could severely damage the U.S. economy, if not posing an
“existential threat” to the economy, but these very same economists also see that Wall
Street effectively owns Washington, D.C. Again, once the nonsense of the New World
Order conspiracy theories are stripped out—it’s the Jews, it’s the Illuminati, it’s the
Insiders—there is widespread agreement that it’s the Wall Street banks and the top one
71
Nelson D. Schwartz, “Corporate Debt Coming Due May Squeeze Credit,” New York Times, March 15,
2010, at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/business/16debt.html.
72
Rick Bookstaber, “The Municipal Market,” April 4, 2010, at
http://rick.bookstaber.com/2010/04/municipal-market.html.
73
Dan Froomkin, “‘Something’s Got To Give’: Massive Pension Shortfalls Threaten To Bankrupt States,”
The Huffington Post, April 5, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/somethings-got-to-give-
ma_n_525860.html.
Scott Thill, ‟Are Goldman Sachs and the Megabanks Able to Wipe out an Entire Economy with a
74
Keystroke?,” AlterNet, May 27, 2010, at http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/147006.
75
Michael Cooper and Mary William Walsh, “Mounting Debts by States Stoke Fears of Crisis,” New York
Times, December 5, 2010, at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/us/politics/05states.html.
34
percent of the population, or even the top one-tenth of one percent—who effectively
own and loot the country to their own benefit.
Miles Mogulescu’s analysis of the writings of Simon Johnson, Joseph Stiglitz,
Nouriel Roubini, Dean Baker, and others concluded on the issue of Too Big To Fail:
“But Johnson has the long-term politics right—unless we break up the 6-8 largest banks
which dominate the financial system, we will both be strengthening a self-perpetuating
oligarchy which dominates the political system to protect its own wealth and power to
the detriment of the national interest and democratic governance, and which uses it’s
government guaranteed ‘too big to fail status’ to take excessive risk which will lead to
the next bubble, the next meltdown, and the next Hobson’s choice by an even more
debt-ridden government between bailing them out again with trillions in taxpayer dollars
or allowing them to fail and sinking the economy into depression.” 76
Thom Hartmann, an astute observer of social forces in American society noted in
his under-appreciated book, The Crash of 2016, that the hollowing-out of the middle
class, the massive infusion of corporate money into politics producing an oligarchy, and
out-sourcing Congressional law-writing to corporate-funded think tanks had severely
weakened the foundations of American society and politics. In his Introduction,
Hartmann warned: “This crash is coming. It’s inevitable. I may be off a few years plus
or minus in my timing, but the realities of the economic fundamentals left to us by thirty-
three years of Reagonomics and deregulation have made it a certainty. We are…so far
into them it’s extremely unlikely that anything other than reinflating the recent bubbles to
76
Miles Mogulescu, “Does Size Matter? Simon Johnson vs. Paul Krugman on Whether to Break Up ‘Too
Big to Fail’ Banks,” The Huffington Post, April 12, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-
mogulescu/does-size-matter-simon-jo_b_534699.html.
35
buy a little time here and there will happen.” What worried Hartmann? The humongous
size of the derivatives market relative to the U.S. economy: “At $1.2 quadrillion, the
derivatives market is roughly twenty-one times the size of the global GDP. To say that
all the money in the world can’t stop the derivatives market from imploding wouldn’t be
an exaggeration. In fact, it’d be a gross understatement” [emphasis in original]. 77
Nor do many economists and international observers believe the U.S. political
system is capable of formulating policies that could cope with a future economic crisis.
While Desmond Lachman of the American Enterprise Institute apparently had a
pro-austerity agenda that the United States had to cut Medicare and Social Security, he
nevertheless likened the United States to a Third World country in terms of its political
response to the financial crisis. According to Lachman, “I’m more concerned that the
United States is coming to resemble Argentina, Russia and other so-called emerging
markets, both in what led us to the crisis, and in how we’re trying to fix it…. However,
watching Goldman Sachs’s seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs as well as
the way that Republicans and Democrats alike tiptoed around reforming Freddie Mac
and Fannie Mae—among the largest campaign contributors to Congress—made me
wonder if the differences between the United States and the Asian economies were only
a matter of degree…. Yet how often do U.S. leaders respond to growing signs of
77
Thom Hartmann, The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It,
New York: Twelve Books, 2014: xviii, xxvii, and 200-1.
36
economic dysfunctionality by spouting nationalistic rhetoric that echoes the speeches of
Latin American demagogues.” 78
In March 2009, Simon Johnson wrote in The Atlantic “The Silent Coup.” Johnson
argued that Wall Street and its enablers in the economics profession had ideologically
captured Washington, D.C. and using massive political donations and lobbying funds
had shaped the political and economic systems to their own benefit creating, in effect,
the world’s “most advanced oligarchy.” This oligarchy would continue to fleece and loot
the American people while growing increasingly richer. 79 Five years later, Johnson
argued that not only did the problem of oligarchy continue, and not only was the
financial system “prone to collapse,” but propping up Wall Street banks at the cost of
saving Main Street meant there is “no inclination to recognize that providing support to
parts of the financial sector undermines the legitimacy of the central bank.” Yves Smith
agreed with Johnson’s analysis and extended it the large- and medium-scale corporate
elite who derive enormous bonuses based upon their stock market results or the
business they do with Wall Street in terms of mergers and acquisitions. 80
Paul Krugman noted by the end of 2009 that “the U.S. government as a whole—
has become ominously dysfunctional…. Doing nothing is not an option—not unless you
78
Desmond Lachman, “Welcome to America, the World’s Scariest Emerging Market,” Washington Post,
March 29, 2009, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/03/25/AR2009032502226.html.
79
Simon Johnson, “The Quiet Coup,” The Atlantic, May 2009, at
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice. Simon Johnson and James Kwak, Thirteen Bankers,
an excerpt, no date, accessed April 10, 2010, at http://13bankers.com/.
80
Simon Johnson, “The Rich Country Trap,” Economix Blog, New York Times, January 2, 2014, at
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/the-rich-country-trap/. Yves Smith, “Simon Johnson
Reminds Us That the Banks’ Quiet Coup is Still Very Much in Place,” NakedCapitalism, January 3, 2014,
at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/simon-johnson-reminds-us-banks-quiet-coup-still-place.html.
37
want the nation to sit motionless, with an effectively paralyzed government, waiting for
financial, environmental and fiscal crises to strike.” 81 Liberal pundit D.J. Dionne noted
that “we are no longer a normal democracy.” One conservative Senator could
effectively filibuster any proposed legislation. 82 Carl Bernstein believed the Congress
was suffering a “‘systemic breakdown’” and suffering from “‘systemic corruption.’” 83
Thomas Friedman reported from the Davos, Switzerland summit of political, economic,
and financial elites in January 2010 that the buzz inside was of America being
“‘politically unstable’” and “‘unpredictable.’” 84
And, the worst part of the next financial collapse, if and when it happens, is that
the financial elite have rigged the financial system in their favor through new rules
regarding protection from states and municipalities going bankrupt (having a “‘safe
harbor’”), and securitizing rents, in addition to mortgages, is that the Wall Street banks
will not only be looting the American treasury, they will be looting the American people
directly—(il)legally taking their bank deposits and pensions.
David Malone, a documentary filmmaker, outlined Plan A and what he thought
were the critical elements of a hypothetical Plan B for the Wall Street banks. Plan A is
the current situation wherein the federal and state governments convince citizens that
81
Paul Krugman, “A Dangerous Dysfunction,” New York Times, December 20, 2009, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21krugman.html.
82
E.J. Dionne, Jr., “Democrats: Stop whining and pass health reform,” The Washington Post, December
21, 2009, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/20/AR2009122002129.html.
Carl Bernstein, ‟US Congress is Corrupt, Systematically Broken,” The Huffington Post, December 23,
83
2009, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/23/carl-bernstein-us-congres_n_402331.html .
84
Thomas Friedman, “Never Heard That Before,” New York Times, January 30, 2010, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/opinion/31friedman.html.
38
austerity budget cuts to public services and privatization of public services are
necessary to pay off debts incurred to Wall Street through predatory lending. Plan A
involves pain and sacrifice and the possibility of resistance. Malone suggested that
Plan B could be utterly catastrophic to the American people. While I leave out his
analysis of changes in bankruptcy laws and the workings of the shadow banking
system’s complex lending instruments, here is his bottom line: “For the last four years
who has been putting money in to the banks? And who has become a massive bond
holder in all the banks? We have. First via our national banks and now via the Fed,
ECB and various tax payer funded bailout funds. We are the bond holders who would
be shafted by the Plan B looting. We would be the people waiting in line for the money
the banks would have already made off with…. The result is that the assets which the
big banks would be legally allowed to seize and keep in the event of the failing bank
actually going under would be ours.” And, Malone suggested, resolution of the financial
collapse could occur in hours, not weeks or months: “But if I am not wrong, then the
banks have created a financial Armageddon looting machine. Their Plan B is a
mechanism to loot not just the more vulnerable banks in weaker nations, but those
nations themselves. And the looting will not take months not even days. It could
happen in hours if not minutes. Our leaders would have only a few hours to decide who
they would side with: the banks or us. The past four years give me no faith they would
39
choose us.”85 Ellen Brown, an expert on central banking, found Malone’s analysis
plausible and devoted considerable space to quoting it. 86
In 2012, Alexander Arapoglou, professor of finance at the University of North
Carolina’s Kenan-Flager Business School and a former derivatives trader, and Jerri-
Lynn Scofield, a securities lawyer and former derivatives trader, wrote that the shadow
banking system—hedge funds and other financial entities located outside the main Wall
Street banks and loosely regulated, if at all—not only could cause the next financial
crisis, but given the lack of regulatory oversight Americans could lose their paychecks,
pensions, and other monies. They noted that the shadow banking sector liabilities “are
currently about equal to the entire U.S. gross national product,” the latter being the sum
total of all economic output in the country. The shadow banking sector has indirect
access to the funds of working Americans through institutional investors like pension
funds, colleges, and charities. The authors pointed out that “Your pension fund likely
invests in freewheeling hedge funds. Your money market mutual fund deposits aren’t
nearly as safe as you think they are. The same crazy mortgage products that created
the last financial crisis are about to be rolled out for rent rolls,” that is, rents are to be
bundled together and sold to other investors thereby rendering your landlord as some
foreign investment entity whose sole interest is collecting your rent check and not
managing properly the rental unit. The authors closed their analysis with a chilling
85
David Malone, “Plan B—How to Loot Nations and Their Banks Legally,” Information Clearinghouse,
December 17, 2011, at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30016.htm.
86
Ellen Brown, “The Armageddon Looting Machine: The Looming Mass Destruction From Derivatives,”
Huffington Post, September 18, 2013, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/the-armageddon-
looting-ma_b_3944739.html.
40
warning, “So why are [we] waiting for shadow banking monsters to devour the
economy— and your job, your savings, your community — again?” 87
Yves Smith noted that the 2005 bankruptcy law change made derivatives senior
to unsecured deposits, and, that the Wall Street banks had moved substantial amounts
of their derivatives liabilities into the commercial banks that held their customers
deposits where they are insured up to $250,000 by the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation. Thus, in a large-scale financial crisis—all the more likely since all the Wall
Street banks and hedge funds are connected to each other—the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporations meager funds to guarantee insured deposits up to $250,000
would be depleted—thus setting the stage for the Wall Street banks to loot their Main
Street customers. Smith noted, “taxpayers almost certainly can and will foot the bill for
any derivatives misadventure that digs too deeply into FDIC reserves. And don’t kid
yourself about the odds of that happening.” 88
By 2013, Ellen Brown was fully convinced that changes in bankruptcy law would
allow a Wall Street bank with huge losses from derivatives would be allowed to legally
steal the deposits and pensions of its depositors, both individuals who are “unsecured
creditors” as well as the funds of local and state governments who are “secured
creditors.” Brown noted that a joint Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Bank of
England policy paper unveiled in December 2012, but reflecting a much longer period of
87
Alexander Arapoglou and Jerri-Lynn Scofield, “The Looming Threat That Could Initiate the Next
Economic Collapse,” AlterNet, September 17, 2012, at http://www.alternet.org/economy/looming-threat-
could-initiate-next-economic-collapse.
88
Yves Smith, “When You Weren’t Looking, Democrat Bank Stooges Launch Bills to Permit Bailouts,
Deregulate Derivatives,” NakedCapitalism, March 19, 2013, at
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/when-you-werent-looking-democrat-bank-stooges-launch-bills-
to-permit-bailouts-deregulate-derivatives.html.
41
formulation, would allow deposits, which the banks legally own once you make the
deposit and are therefore considered unsecured IOUs to a bank, in a financial crisis to
be converted to bank stock. In other words, “If our IOUs are converted to bank stock,
they will no longer be subject to insurance protection but will be ‘at risk’ and vulnerable
to being wiped out…. When it is implemented, the FDIC will no longer need to protect
depositor funds; it can just confiscate them…. Taking depositor funds is simply theft.” 89
In Brown’s second article she explained that derivatives had the first demand on a
bank’s capital in a financial crisis. Thus, it could seize the funds of unsecured creditors,
like deposits, as well as the funds of secured creditors like state and local governments.
Brown noted that “Rather than banks being put into bankruptcy to salvage the deposits
of their customers, the customers will now be put into bankruptcy to save the banks….
The FDIC was set up to insure the safety of deposits. Now it, it seems, its function will
be the confiscation of deposits to save Wall Street…. Main Street will again have been
plundered by Wall Street.” 90 In her fourth article, Brown noted that the theft of Detroit’s
public pensions was a form of this “legalized theft” whereby Main Street bails out Wall
Street. Brown observed, “In Detroit, it is the municipal workers who are being bailed in,
stripped of a major portion of their pensions to save the banks…. Meanwhile, the
municipal workers, whose pensions are theoretically protected under the Michigan
Constitution, are classified as ‘unsecured’ claimants who will get the scraps after the
89
Ellen Brown, “It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors,”
Huffington Post, April 3, 2013, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/banks-
confiscation_b_2957937.html.
90
Ellen Brown, “Winner Takes All: The Super-priority Status of Derivatives,” Huffington Post, April 11,
2013, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/winner-takes-all-the-supe_b_3054522.html. See also
Ellen Brown, “Bail-out Is Out, Bail-in Is In: Time for Some Publicly Owned Banks,” Huffington Post, May 2,
2013, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/bailout-is-out-bailin-is-_b_3178702.html.
42
secured creditors put in their claims. The banking casino, it seems, trumps even the
state constitution. The banks win and the workers lose once again.” And Brown
sounded the alarm that the Detroit looting could be just the start of wholesale fleecing of
the American people: “But it does pose a systemic risk to Main Street, local
governments, and the contractual rights of pensioners…. The Detroit bankruptcy is
establishing a template for wiping out government pensions everywhere. Chicago or
New York could be next. There is also the systemic risk posed to the municipal bond
system.” 91
Thom Hartmann believes that the cause of the next financial catastrophe will be
a collapse of the housing market bubble, especially derivatives based on bundling rents
into complex financial instruments that virtually no one understands. 92 However, even if
Hartmann were wrong on the cause, his description of the consequences, if true, are
the stuff of nightmares: “When this [real estate collapse] starts to happen, there will be
European-style runs on the banks in America. One by one, the major banking
institutions in America will dissolve, taking with them the credit lines to businesses large
and small. Companies won’t be able to meet their payrolls. There will be massive
91
Ellen Brown, “The Detroit Bail-in Template: Fleecing Pensioners to Save the Banks,” Huffington Post,
August 6, 2013, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/the-detroit-bailin-templa_b_3709202.html.
See also Ellen Brown, “The Wall Street Ticking Time Bomb That Could Blow Up Your Bank Account,”
AlterNet, April 9, 2013, at http://www.alternet.org/economy/wall-street-ticking-time-bomb-could-blow-your-
bank-account.
92
Thom Hartmann, The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It,
New York: Twelve Books, 2014: 201. Thom Hartmann, “The Banksters Are Now Setting Up the Crash of
2016,” TruthOut, December 2, 2013, at http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20378-the-banksters-are-
now-setting-up-the-crash-of-2016. Laura Gottesdiener, “The Empire Strikes Back: How Wall Street Has
Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme—Again,” TomDispatch, November 26, 2013,
at http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175777/.
43
layoffs. The American economy, the largest empire that has ever graced the planet, will
collapse spectacularly in front of our eyes.” 93
To put Hartmann’s doomsday scenario into perspective, it is necessary to
estimate how much the last economic crisis—the one we are still suffering from—cost
the American people. Eduardo Porter reported in January 2014 that three economists
from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimated that the crisis cost every man,
woman, and child in America roughly $120,000—and that did not include other costs
more difficult to estimate than the ones the economists included in their estimate. For
example, assuming that the American economy would return to its pre-2008 crash level
by 2023, Americans would have lost between $19,000 and $45,000 person—or
between $6 trillion and $14 trillion in today’s (2014) money. If it took longer for the
economy to recover, Americans could have lost at the upper bound of the estimate an
additional $80,000 or about $25 trillion. But, the $80,000 was a conservative figure.
The economists believed that Americans had lost an average of $150,000 in future
earnings of their lifetimes. In addition to lost wages of $900 billion, the loss of worker
well-being would cost an additional $14 trillion. Plus, the government spent an
additional $12 trillion to bail the Wall Street banks out. Adding all these figures up
comes to between $32 trillion and $65 trillion. 94
93
Thom Hartmann, The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It,
New York: Twelve Books, 2014: 201-2.
94
Eduardo Porter, “Recession’s True Cost Is Still Being Tallied,” New York Times, January 22, 2014, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/business/economy/the-cost-of-the-financial-crisis-is-still-being-
tallied.html.
44
The idea that a Black Swan economic collapse could severely affect the United
States has not escaped the attention of some strategic thinkers in the Department of
Defense (DoD). In November 2008, Nathan Freier of the United States Army’s
Strategic Studies Institute, released a paper on the necessity of the DoD including
strategic shocks—low probability events with high impacts—into defense planning. One
of the named Black Swan events that Freier wrote about was “Violent, Strategic
Dislocation Inside the United States.” Freier considered the detonation of a weapon of
mass destruction inside the country as well as “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of
functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency,
pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters are
all paths to disruptive domestic shock.” Freier suggested that “this is clearly a ‘Black
Swan’ that merits some visibility inside DoD and the Department of Homeland Security.
Moreover, the use of military forces inside the United States would represent “no
greater source of strategic shock for DoD than operationalizing that component of the
oath of service in a widespread domestic emergency that entails rapid dissolution of
public order in all or significant parts of the United States.” Freier noted that this would
be “uncharted strategic territory” and should the military be required “to contain and
reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility…. civilian authorities, on advice of the
defense establishment, would need to rapidly determine the parameters defining the
legitimate use of military force inside the United States.”
While Freier was describing the characteristics of a “strategic state” to the United
States, it is reasonable to assume that the same criterion would be utilized by other
nuclear armed powers in reference to the United States. The first criterion of a
45
“strategic state” is that it “Possess significant employable weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) capacity.” In other words, a strategic collapse in the United States, by definition
a “strategic state,” would be deeply worrying to Britain, France, Russia, China, Pakistan,
India, and North Korea—all nuclear-armed states with a vital interest in ensuring the
non-employment of U.S. nuclear weapons during its Black Swan event. 95
Apparently the possible use of military troops and martial law during the 2008
was contemplated as a theoretical possibility by President Bush’s Secretary of the
Treasury. According to an account by Peter Dale Scott based on public comments
made by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and Representative Brad Sherman (D-CA),
“The financial bailout legislation of September 2008 was only passed after members of
both Congressional houses were warned that failure to act would threaten civil unrest
and the imposition of martial law…. Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO, said that
might even require a declaration of martial law, the two noted.” 96 Ellen Brown quoted
from Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s spokesman Damian McBride’s autobiography in
which he quoted Brown as being very concerned in 2008 that if the banks shuttered and
people could not access their cash or buy food, petrol and other necessities that there
could be “‘anarchy’” that would require putting “‘the Army on the streets.’” Ellen Brown,
the Green Party’s 2014 candidate for State Treasurer, suggested that the fear of an
economic collapse and resulting anarchy “could explain the massive, government-
authorized spying on American citizens, the domestic use of drones, and the elimination
95
Nathan Freier, Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Strikes’ in Defense Strategy Development,
United States Army Strategic Studies Institute, November 2008, at
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub890.pdf, pages 31-3 and 29.
96
Peter Dale Scott, “War, Martial Law, and the Economic Crisis,” OpEdNews, February 26, 2011, at
http://www.opednews.com/articles/War-Martial-Law-and-the-by-Peter-Dale-Scott-110226-441.html.
46
of due process and of ‘posse comitatus’ (the federal law prohibiting the military from
enforcing “law and order” on non-federal property). Constitutional protections are being
thrown out the window in favor of protecting the elite class in power.” 97
As noted above, the right-wing is deeply wedded to the idea that they will come
to power as a result of an economic collapse inside the United States brought about by
the Federal Reserve System. What one can conclude is that one major social
movement in the United States—the broad right-wing—is psychologically prepared, if
not prepared in other ways, for an economic collapse and have a narrative that they will
use to contest the legitimacy of the United States government. Whether their ideas are
right or wrong, good or bad, at least they are preparing their adherents for taking power.
Do not allow the “looniness” of New World Order conspiracy theories and their
obsession with expectations of Weimar-like hyper-inflation to obscure the main
message that their adherents undoubtedly absorb: prepare for an unprecedented
economic collapse that leads to a political collapse and the loss of federal legitimacy,
and the subsequent domination of all American institutions and culture by right-wing
Christians. However, prior to their coming to power, the Christian Right fully expects to
build organizations and networks that can contest the legitimacy of the federal
government at the local and state levels of government.
Economic Collapse and the Patriot Militia—Edwin Vieira’s Strategic Writings
97
Ellen Brown, “Is Homeland Security Preparing for the Next Wall Street Collapse?,” EllenBrown.com,
October 7, 2013, at http://ellenbrown.com/2013/10/07/is-homeland-security-preparing-for-the-next-wall-
street-collapse/.
47
It is obvious that economic collapse and the Patriot militia go together. These
two ideas are joined in the person of Gary North. William S. Lind’s strategic
assessments provide another strong link between economic collapse and the Patriot
militia.
Norm Olson, one of the earliest public promoters and organizers of the Patriot
militia movement in the 1990s told a conservative audience in Alaska in 2010, where he
now heads up his third militia unit, the Alaska Citizens Militia, that the purpose of the
militia is to provide law and order following an economic collapse. Speaking at a
Second Amendment rally in March 2010, Olson told the crowd, “‘Economic collapse of
this country is a foregone conclusion.’” The Alaska-based reporter covering the
gathering noted that “Olson said that when a collapse comes, the militia can be a
means of ensuring order and protection and urged action.” 98
Alan Boraas, a professor of anthropology at Kenai Community College in Alaska,
observed a close ideological affinity between Olson’s militia ideas, which he
characterized as “training for the Tribulation,” and Alaska’s Tea Party movement.
Accoring to Boraas, “There is a close connection between the Alaska Citizens Militia
and the tea party movement. Together they seethe at the mention of President Obama.
For Olson, Obama’s Keynesian economic policies speak of end times. For tea partiers,
it is merely the forerunner to total economic collapse.”99
98
Jenny Neyman, “‘Something horrible going on’—Rally takes government to task,” Redoubt Reporter,
March 17, 2010, at http://redoubtreporter.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/‘something-horrible-going-on’-—-
rally-takes-government-to-task/#more-3239.
99
Alan Boraas, “Dealing with ‘Drop Zone,’” Homer Tribune, November 3, 2010, at
http://homertribune.com/2010/11/dealing-with-%E2%80%98drop-zone%E2%80%99/.
48
Adam Kokesh, one of the attendees at the Jekyll Island meeting which organized
the follow-on “continental congress,” in mid-2013 called on fellow Second Amendment
advocates, libertarians, and revolutionaries to march into Washington, D.C. with their
guns in violation of local and federal laws, as well as encouraging them to march in all
50 state capitols “‘to demand that the governors of these 50 states immediately initiate
the process of an orderly dissolution of the federal government through secession and
reclamation of federally held property.’” He suggested that we “‘we may have passed
the point at which non-violent revolution becomes impossible.’” According to a Media
Matters report, Kokesh told fellow conspiracy monger and radio talk show host Pete
Santilli, “‘A lot of people have raised criticism about well, you can’t just end the federal
government. Well you can’t keep it going either. Look at it, it’s going to collapse under
its own weight. We are an empire in decline and if we don’t do something about this
now, like an orderly peaceful dissolution, it’s going to be a chaotic collapse.’”100
But, there is another unofficial or informal strategic adviser to Ron Paul, the
constitutional lawyer and Christian Right stalwart Edwin Vieira, who has written
extensively on this conjunction. Edwin Vieira does not get much attention by observers
of the Christian Right, except for noting that he authored an influential book, How to
Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary. 101 But, it was Vieira’s proposal to revive the militias
100
Continental Congress, “History Leading to the Continental Congress 2009,” at http://cc2009.us/about-
cc2009/history-leading-to-cc2009. Nick Wing, “Adam Kokesh, Pro-Gun Activist, Calls For ‘Revolutionary
Army’ To Demand Nationwide Secession,” Huffington Post, May 30, 2013, at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/30/adam-kokesh-revolutionary-army_n_3358963.html. Timothy
Johnson, “Adam Kokesh Calls Off Armed March On D.C. In Favor Of 50 State March For ‘Orderly
Dissolution Of The Federal Government,’” Media Matters, May 29, 2013, at
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/29/adam-kokesh-calls-off-armed-march-on-dc-in-favo/194259.
101
Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2007: 5. Max Blumenthal, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the
Party, New York: Nation Books, 2009: 118.
49
under the control of the state governments, called “The Power of the Sword,” that was
agreed upon at the self-described “‘continental congress’” spearheaded by several long-
time Ron Paul allies Robert Schultz and Howard Phillips. 102 The Southern Poverty Law
Center’s thumbnail biography of Vieira noted that he was a “longtime associate of tax
protester Robert ‘Bob’ Schulz” and that both men “co-organized a meeting of 30
‘freedom keepers’ at Jekyll Island in Georgia, a summit that appears to have played a
key role in reinvigorating the antigovernment Patriot movement.” The SPLC
summarized Vieira’s thinking that an economic collapse would lead to the construction
of a police state. 103
Understanding Vieira’s views are foundational to understanding the
organizational role played by the Patriot militia in the overall Christian Right’s strategy.
Vieira is an informal strategic adviser to Ron Paul. 104 Many of Vieira’s writings can be
found at Larry Pratt’s Gun Owners of America website. 105
He is an articulate advocate of the view that gun control was necessary to keep
the slaves enslaved, hence current gun control efforts are a mechanism to enslave the
American people. As Vieira put it, “These parallels illustrate that general ‘gun control’ is
102
“Journals of the Continental Congress 2009,” at http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/1742876/journals-
09-16-pdf-february-10-2010-4-58-pm-350k?dn=y.
103
Southern Poverty Law Center, “Meet the ‘Patriots,’” Intelligence Report Summer 2010, at
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/summer/meet-the-
patriots?p=0,3.
104
Edwin Vieira Jr., “Ron Paul and the Militia, Part 1 of 2,” News With Views, November 12, 2007, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin71.htm. Edwin Vieira, “Ron Paul and the Militia, Part 2 of 2,”
News With Views, November 12, 2007, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin72.htm.
Gun Owners of America, ‟By: Edwing Vieira: Militia,” no date, accessed April 24, 2010, at
105
http://gunowners.org/by-edwin-vieira-militia/.
50
nothing less than a political program aimed at reimposing the most crucial ‘badge and
incident’ of slavery on everyone other than an elitist leadership class and its armed
guardians, in order thereby to remove the ultimate deterrent to and defense against that
class’s usurpation and tyranny, and keep common Americans perpetually ‘in due
Subjection and Obedience.’” 106
Vieira is the strongest proponent—though his views are disregarded by many in
the secessionist movement—that secession can only occur under very limited
constitutional provisions entailing comprehensive monetary and state-level militia
preparations, what he called “The Power of the Purse and the Power of the Sword.” 107
106
Edwin Vieira, Jr., “The Constitutional Militia, Slavery, And Contemporary ‘Gun Control,’” Gun Owners
of America, June 6, 2005, at http://gunowners.org/opev04.htm.
107
Edwin Vieira, “A Dissenting Opinion on ‘Secession,’ Part 1 of 3,” News With Views, February 1, 2010,
at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin203.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟A Dissenting Opinion On
‛Secession,’ Part 2 of 3” News With Views, February 1, 2010, at http://edwinvieira.com/edwin204.htm.
Edwin Vieira Jr., “A Dissenting Opinion on ‘Secession’ Part 3 of 3,” News With Views, February 1, 2010,
at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin205.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟Thoughts On Part One Of ‛A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, March 3, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin210.htm. Edwin Vieira, “Thoughts on Part Two of ‘A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, March 3, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin211.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟Thoughts On Part Three Of ‛A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, April 8, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin212.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “Thoughts On Part Four Of ‘A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, March 14, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin213.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “Thoughts On Part Five Of ‘A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, March 14, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin214.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟Thoughts On Part Six Of ‛A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, March 14, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin218.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “Thoughts On Part Seven Of ‘A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, March 14, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin216.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “Thoughts On Part Eight Of ‘A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, April 8, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin217.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟Thoughts On Part Nine Of ‛A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, April 8, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin218.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “Thoughts On Part Ten Of ‘A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, April 8, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin219.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟Thoughts on Part Eleven of ‛A
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, April 8, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin220.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟Thoughts on Part Twelve of ‛A
51
He is a very strong advocate for the view that the American people with their
Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms to protect a free state, what he calls
“the Militia of the several States, is the proper basis for defense. 108 And, Vieira argues
that most contemporary militia units are illegal or counter-productive, while a true
Constitutional Militia suffers none of the defects of the private militias. 109
Vieira’s views on “The Power of the Sword” were adopted by the self-declared
“continental congress” and his views are completely in accord with the Christian
Reconstructionist axiom that the defense of right-thinking Christians against federal
tyranny must be led by lesser magistrates, in this case, the state governors and
legislatures, under which real constitutional militias must be formed. Nevertheless,
Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, April 8, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin221.htm.
108
Edwin Vieira, Jr., “‘The Militia of the Several States’ Guarantee The Right To Keep and Bear Arms,”
Part 1 of 8, News With Views, July 5, 2005, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin16.htm. Edwin
Vieira, Jr., “‘The Militia of the Several States’ Guarantee The Right To Keep and Bear Arms,” Part 2 of 8,
News With Views, August 5, 2005, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin17.htm.
109
Edwin Vieira Jr., “True Vs. False Militia and Why the Difference Matters—Part 1 of 3,” News With
Views, July 30, 2007, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin61.htm. Edwin Vieira, “True Vs.
False Militia and Why the Difference Matters—Part 2 of 3,” News With Views, July 30, 2007, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin62.htm. Edwin Vieira Jr., “True Vs. False Militia and Why the
Difference Matters—Part 3 of 3,” News With Views, July 30, 2007, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin63.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “‘The Militia of the Several States’
Guarantee The Right To Keep and Bear Arms,” Part 1 of 8, News With Views, July 5, 2005, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin16.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “‘The Militia of the Several States’
Guarantee The Right To Keep and Bear Arms,” Part 2 of 8, News With Views, August 5, 2005, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin17.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “‘The Militia of the Several States’
Guarantee The Right To Keep and Bear Arms,” Part 3 of 8, News With Views, September 21, 2005, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin18.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “‘The Militia of the Several States’
Guarantee The Right To Keep and Bear Arms,” Part 4 of 8, News With Views, April 3, 2006, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin37.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “‘The Militia of the Several States’
Guarantee The Right To Keep and Bear Arms,” Part 5 of 8, News With Views, July 5, 2005, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin38.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “‘The Militia of the Several States’
Guarantee The Right To Keep and Bear Arms,” Part 6 of 8, News With Views, April 3, 2006, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin39.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “‘The Militia of the Several States’
Guarantee The Right To Keep and Bear Arms,” Part 7 of 8, News With Views, April 3, 2006, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin40.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “‘The Militia of the Several States’
Guarantee The Right To Keep and Bear Arms,” Part 8 of 8, News With Views, April 3, 2006, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin41.htm.
52
Vieira is also the strongest proponent of the worldview that the Patriot militia is a
necessary development to combat federal tyranny following an inevitable financial
collapse. Vieira’s strategic writings, especially those adopted as recommended action
items by the Ron Paul “continental congress,” are also implemented by activists.
Vieira has two starting points undergirding his argument that a real constitutional
militia and using gold/silver for all economic trade are linked. Vieira believes the federal
government is essentially a “gangster government” because the Sixteenth Amendment
was never ratified properly. Thus, under the mistaken belief that it was ratified properly,
“law is just a camouflage, or a cover story, for the gang’s looting and oppression of the
rest of society.” Vieira told a June 2000 conference organized by Bob Schulz, “Looting
a whole country for generations under color of an unratified constitutional amendment,
constitutes a crime against the people, if anything does.” Vieira also believes that direct
federal taxes on labor are illegal and constitute “precisely the master-slave theory of
wealth generation.” 110 Thus, Vieira’s starting point is that the federal government is
illegitimate, run by gangsters, and unconstitutionally looting the American people and
enslaving them.
Vieira’s second starting point, based on his use of Ludwig von Mises and Murray
Rothbard’s economic analyses and his belief that the Federal Reserve System is
unconstitutional, is that the U.S. Federal Reserve System’s fiat money will inevitably
collapse following a series of economic crises. As he wrote in a 2005 paper, “Economic
theory also teaches that any scheme of fiat currency and fractional-reserve central
110
Edwin Vieira, “Gangster Government,” speech at the National Press Club for We The People,
Constitution Society, June 29, 2000, at http://www.constitution.org/col/vieiraspeech.htm.
53
banking is just as inherently flawed [as Soviet central planning], incapable of permanent
existence, and inevitably doomed to disaster as all-around, full-blown socialism,
because fractional-reserve central banking systematically subverts the free market’s
structure of prices through expansion of currency and credit—which results in
redistribution of wealth, misallocation of scarce capital, and collapse in either
depression or hyperinflation followed by depression.”111
In 2005, Vieira wrote a number of articles establishing the view the federal
government was itself preparing for the crash of the financial system and future
oppression of the American people because the American people would rebel following
a series financial crises that increasingly impoverish the American people.
Consequently, Constitution-based militias under the control of state governments were
required to resist federal tyranny.
In an article on the Department of Homeland Security, Vieira wrote: “Any scheme
of fractional-reserve banking based on fiat currency the value of which is secured by
nothing more than economically unsound debt and the government’s power to tax is
inherently and inexorably self-destructive. No such scheme can long survive. The
Federal Reserve System is just such a scheme. And the Establishment knows it. If
America’s hypertrophic markets and gas-bag banks were to burst all at once, as they
did in 1929-1932, nationwide chaos would ensue. A catastrophic implosion
(depression) or explosion (hyperinflation) is perhaps unlikely…. The Establishment
cannot, however, prevent the rotten monetary and banking regime from gradually
111
Edwin Vieira, Jr., “Are Monetary and Banking Crises Inevitable in the Near Future?,” News With Views,
March 17, 2005, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin2.htm.
54
crumbling in a series of smaller, yet nonetheless serious crises. And, again, the
Establishment knows it.”
Vieira dismissed the idea that the Department of Homeland Security was created
to defend continental United States against Islamic terrorists. Not incorrectly, Vieira
wrote, “All the militant Islamic fanatics from Casablanca to the Celebes could never
subjugate this country in a hundred years of waging a ‘war of terror.’ They could not
even inflict much physical damage in comparison to what an old-fashioned conventional
shooting war might cause…. So, the ostensible threats terrorists pose cannot possibly
justify turning this whole country upside down in fits of orchestrated mass hysteria, let
alone constructing a Stalinist-strength police state that directly contravenes the
Constitution.”
Thus, the real purpose of the Department of Homeland Security was to oppress
the American people during a period of intense economic hardship: “The Establishment
is systematically constructing a domestic police- state apparatus, indoctrinated, trained,
and ready to impose on the great mass of Americans whatever harsh measures the
Establishment decrees, because it expects, in the not-so-distant future, disturbances in
America of magnitudes far greater and consequences far more reaching than anything
a few Islamic terrorists could possibly cause. These must be disturbances that involve
very large numbers of average Americans, not simply a few militant extremists. They
must be disturbances that only a police state can quell, which means that in whole or in
large part they will be completely justified under the Constitution. And, most
55
importantly, they must be disturbances which, if not quelled at whatever cost, would
bring down the Establishment.”112
Vieira then wrote a three-part series in 2005 around the core idea of “the Militia of
the several States,” the phrase coming from Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution
which puts command of the militias under the Commander in Chief when they are called
into service. Thus, Vieira, like many in the Patriot militia in the 1990s and the gun rights
movement, as well his contemporary strategist William S. Lind, argued that under the
Constitution “homeland security” was relegated to the people collectively with their right
to keep and bear arms.
In his first article, Vieira wrote that “So, the true ‘federal government’ of this
country consists of six parts: We the People (the political body, empowered to vote),
Congress, the President, the Judiciary, the States, and the Militia (the armed body,
empowered to fight). Yet when and where, in all the strident propaganda and agitation,
hubble-bubble, hoopla, and orchestrated paranoia about the need for ‘homeland
security’ to defend America against ‘terrorism,’ has anyone in political prominence
pointed this out?.... Why, instead, is ‘homeland security’ being used as a cover-story to
rationalize the construction of a centralized national police state, for which the
Constitution provides no justification whatsoever, but disallows in every particular?” 113
112
Edwin Vieira, “Homeland Security’—For What and For Whom?,” News With Views, March 8, 2005, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin.htm.
113
Edwin Vieira, “Are You Doing Your Constitutional Duty for ‘Homeland Security’? Part 1,” News With
Views, May 6, 2005, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin11.htm.
56
In his second article Vieira got to one of the core ideas of Fourth Generation
Warfare, namely that a properly constituted “Militia of the several States” would deprive
the federal government of its monopoly on the use of force or violence—just as William
Lind had argued. Vieira argued that making the “Militia of the several States” the
constitutionally-grounded lynchpin of “homeland security” “would threaten the
Establishment’s hegemony. And that hegemony, in the final analysis, is what the
Establishment really means by ‘homeland security.’”
Vieira made three points in defense of his proposal. First, a “Militia of the several
States” would directly involve the American people in their own defense, thus not
subjecting them tyranny. His second point was that the “war on terror” was actually a
war on the American people. As Vieira put it, “‘homeland security’ localized in ‘the
Militia of the several States’ is the most effective way to protect Americans against the
real threat to their liberties. America will never lose her freedoms because of attacks
from some hodge-podge of foreign ‘terrorists.’ The actual, acute danger lies in the
organized efforts of home-grown subversives, boring from within the political process,
the bureaucracies, the courts, the media, academia, the cultural sewers that spew out
‘entertainment,’ and all the other critical points of entry into the machinery of mass
psychological manipulation, then political power, then usurpation, then tyranny. And
which subversives are now using a false concern for ‘homeland security’ as their excuse
to amass for themselves ever-increasing, ever-more-abusive powers in its name.”
Vieira’s third point was that the Patriot militia that had developed, particularly with
its emphasis upon being the legally-based “unorganized militia” was wrong from a
constitutional viewpoint. Vieira argued, “If you are lumped into this ‘unorganized militia’
57
you are just that: unorganized, unarmed, undisciplined, untrained, unsupplied,
undeployed, and unwanted as a matter of statute—thoroughly disregarded by
Congress, wholly disconnected from your necessary constitutional rights and duties,
dispensed with, and withal dispersed within an impotent, disoriented rabble.”
Equally important, the “unorganized militia” relegated the American people to an
inferior political position vis-à-vis the federal government and the police. Vieira argued
that “by being relegated to the ‘unorganized militia’ and thus prevented from performing
their constitutional duties, average Americans are being demeaned as too unimportant,
unqualified, ignorant, irresponsible, and especially politically unreliable to be ‘call[ed]
forth’ for the purposes as to which the Constitution explicitly and unqualifiedly requires
their services.” Lastly, Vieira juxtaposed the “unorganized militia” with what we now call
the militarization of the police. Vieira complained that “every miniscule hamlet is to be
infested with para-military squads in battle dress, staring down the public with menacing
glances and body language, backed up by automatic weapons and armored vehicles
(thereby demonstrating the type of ‘homeland security’ the Establishment really believes
these places are going to get).” 114
Vieira’s third article in the series on “the Militia of the several States” entailed a
criticism of the present militias that were not rooted in the Constitution and an argument
that the gun rights movement was starting the first stage or first steps towards
grounding a future “Militia of the several States” in the Constitution, namely through the
passage of concealed carry laws which empowered citizens to directly protect
114
Edwin Vieira, “Are You Doing Your Constitutional Duty for ‘Homeland Security’? Part 2,” News With
Views, May 16, 2005, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin12.htm.
58
themselves from criminals. And, it concluded with a salute to, at the time, the
burgeoning quasi-militia border patrols that William S. Lind and the white nationalist
movement were promoting as the first line of defense against the “illegal alien invasion.”
Vieira’s first argument was that for the Patriot militia to argue in favor of
constitutionally limited government while “while proposing questionably legal (or, worse
yet, arguably illegal) solutions to present political problems, is self-contradictory. Those
who do so are no better than the people they oppose.” Thus, the Patriot militias had to
be brought under the protection of the Constitution by recommending that “Patriots in
each State should petition their State’s Legislature to organize the ‘unorganized militia,’
with which Congress is doing nothing, in order to provide ‘homeland security’ for the
State.”
Encouraging this “Patriot” move towards constitutionally grounding the militia was
the gun rights movement. Vieira specifically pointed out that that “millions upon millions
of people in ‘the unorganized militia’ can become a politically decisive force for two
reasons: sheer numbers and strong personal interest. Experience throughout the
United States with new laws allowing common Americans to carry concealed firearms
provides encouraging evidence to support this prediction. In State after State, these
laws have been enacted not by the Establishment…but by We the People, who have
forced State legislators to empower common Americans to protect themselves from
criminals.” Of course, those laws were not exactly pushed by “We the People” but by
the National Rifle Association working in very close collaboration with the Christian
Right’s and Corporate America’s American Legislative Exchange Council. Still, one can
sense how the Christian Right uses mini-movements, like passing concealed carry laws
59
or stand your ground laws, to foster the development of a higher level of “culture war
consciousness,” if you will.
And, like William S. Lind, Vieira promoted the idea that quasi-militia border units
were a form of Fourth Generation Warfare opponent to the federal government because
if properly used they could halt the foreign invasion of land grabbers and provide a
defense insurance policy against a future invasion following a financial collapse.
Vieira’s understanding of mass migration as a form of warfare may very well have come
from Lind’s 2004 and 2005 articles written in support of the nascent Minuteman Project.
Vieira considered “These [border] States are actually being invaded by illegal aliens.
And invaded not just by Mexicans (as well as other foreigners) as individuals, but also
by Mexico and who knows what other countries and international organizations in
collusion with her as foreign powers. Indeed, the specific role of the Mexican
government in fostering and assisting this invasion… is openly, brazenly proclaimed by
her own Presidente. This is war—waged in fact, if not declared in law.”
Vieira suggested, much like Lind had, “Can anyone doubt that the borders of the
front-line States could be absolutely secured if Congress ‘call[ed] forth’ an average of
just 1,000 Militiamen from each of the fifty States, all 50,000 serving for three months at
a time in rotation through the rosters of their States' Militia (as was the practice in pre-
constitutional times)?” Vieira then continued that a properly formed and constituted
militia was necessary protection against an “illegal alien invasion” following an economic
collapse: “We the People exercise are the Power of the Purse and the Power of the
Sword. Without monetary reform, the whole country will go under economically in the
not-so-distant future, which calamity will provide the Establishment with a rationalization
60
for imposing a full-fledged police state. And without revitalization of the Militia, the
whole country will be swamped in a flood of illegal immigrants, radically destabilized,
and then ground under the heel of the full-fledged police state the Establishment sets up
in response to the social and political chaos its own policies have caused (even if the
monetary system does not collapse first).” 115
Implicit in Vieira’s formulation is the argument that William Lind had made—
ordinary Americans going to the border to protect their communities demonstrated that
the federal government was failing in its first obligation to its citizens—protecting them
from violence. In April 2005, Lind equated the Minuteman Project to Revolutionary-era
Minutemen by noting that the former were “defend[ing] us from wetbacks rather than
lobsterbacks.” In an August 2005 article, Lind divulged the findings of his working
group’s analysis of what a proper militia would look like to combat a Fourth Generation
War opponent, as well as promoting the recent publication of his first field manual on
Fourth Generation Warfare. One type of militia unit would “maintain domestic order and
control our borders” and function as a “neighborhood watch.” It would have its “own
115
Edwin Vieira Jr., “Are You Doing Your Constitutional Duty for ‘Homeland Security’? Part 3,” News With
Views, May 23, 2005, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin13.htm. Writing at AntiWar.com,
William S. Lind in January 2004, reiterated the point he had made in his 1994 article, namely, that mass
migration was a form of warfare. Wrote Lind, “invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as
invasion by a state army.” See William S. Lind, “Understanding Fourth Generation War,” Antiwar.com,
January 15, 2004, at http://antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=1702. In December 2004, Lind wrote: “As I have
said before in these columns, in a Fourth Generation world, invasion by immigration easily can be more
dangerous than invasion by a foreign army.” See William S. Lind, “4GW On The Home Front,” On War
#94, December 1, 2004, at http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/files/On%20War%20Series%23%20101-
51.pdf. And, in April 2005, one month before Vieira wrote his third article praising without naming the
Minuteman Project, Lind praised that group. See William S. Lind, “MS-13 vs Minutemen?,” On War #113,
April 21, 2005, at http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/files/On%20War%20Series%23%20152-102.pdf. It
is reasonable to assume that some of Vieira’s thinking on immigration as invasion was influenced by Lind
and that he is probably aware of the basic ideas of Fourth Generation Warfare.
61
General Staff.” The General Staff would report to the U.S. Congress, but the mobilized
General Staff “would report to the mobilizing authority (often a state governor).”
In a separate article, On War #131, Lind suggested that his working group had
decided that “the militia we are talking about is a public, not a private militia. It is funded
by government, and it reports to government (it is adcon [administrative control] to
Congress and, unless mobilized, opcon [operation control] to the county sheriff). Our
working group thought it was important to keep the militia away from the federal
executive branch as much as possible, because the executive branch will try either to
destroy it or to turn it into a tool for Big Brother.”
In another article, published at military.com at the same time, Lind explained that
his “working group decided the militia should normally report to the county sheriff, a
local, elected official who has a lot of independence.” The “new militia’s most important
function would be neighborhood watch.” And, Lind bragged that by putting the militia
under the Congress and the mobilizing authority, that is, the state governors (or what
North calls the lesser magistrates), that it would promote good republican government
and strike fear into the federal establishment. As Lind put it, “If the militia idea is on the
right track, it would reinforce rather than undermine the qualities of a true republic. That
in turn means it could strike directly at the origin of 4GW, the state’s crisis of legitimacy.
Of course, it also means that everyone in Washington will see it as a threat, because
Washington is united in its pursuit of the national security state and the total power it
offers to the center. 116
116
William S. Lind, “MS-13 vs Minutemen?,” On War #113, April 21, 2005, at
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/files/On%20War%20Series%23%20152-102.pdf.
62
Thus, there is a good deal of confluence, though not complete agreement,
between Lind’s ideas and Vieira’s ideas regarding the militia by around 2005 and it is
difficult to believe that Vieira would have been unaware of Lind’s influential writings.
However, as we will see in Chapter 19, Lind’s and Vieira’s ideas regarding
reconstituting or the revitalization of the militias under the county sheriffs as part of a
“neighborhood watch” was not only significant and integral to the Ron Paul-linked
“continental congress” action plan, but is currently being implemented under-the-radar
by the Ron Paul-linked Oath Keepers as part of their openly declared strategy. Thus,
one cannot conceive of the current Christian Patriot militia separate and apart from the
underlying Fourth Generation Warfare strategy and ideas. Moreover, this evolution in
organization and mission of new Christian Patriot militias renders obsolete the model
propagated in the 1990s by civil rights organizations and scholars. The militias are not
looking for a violent confrontation with the extant federal government. No, they are
waiting for the federal government to be in a position to fail so that they can contest its
legitimacy at the local level.
In December 2005, Vieira made the connection between economic crises and a
properly formed constitutional militia explicit in a two-part article. Part one reiterated his
view that an economic catastrophe was in America’s future, but he relaxed and
expanded his characterization of that crisis. Vieira suggested that “There will be
monetary and banking crises in America’s not-so-distant future. The monetary and
banking systems are inherently unstable and inevitably and inexorably self-destructive.
William S. Lind, “Organizing the Militia,” August 11, 2005, at http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind72.html.
William S. Lind, ‟Some Responses,” On War #131, August 24, 2005, at
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/files/On%20War%20Series%23%20152-102.pdf. William S. Lind,
“Modern War Symposium,” August 3, 2005, at http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Lind_080305,00.html.
63
The systems’ failure may be chronic—a long drawn-out degeneration; episodic—a
series of sharp, but relatively limited crises; or even catastrophic—a single mammoth
collapse. But fail they will.” These economic crises will cause severe “economic
dislocations” resulting in “political and social conflicts, chaos, and clashes punctuated
with mass violence, all leading to political upheaval.” The fulcrum of the revolt will
center on the growing immiseration of the masses while the “rich and well-connected
continue to prosper, and even centralize more wealth and power in their grasping
hands.” This economic clash will reveal the depths of “cronyism, bribes, blackmail, and
payoffs” that allow the rich to grow richer and the masses to grow poorer leading to the
destruction of “the political apparatus’s credibility and authority.” In other words, a
legitimacy crisis. Part two again stated that the Establishment’s answer to this
legitimacy crisis was the erection of a massive police state. Vieira argued, “A police
state will bring America nothing but a continuation of unsound money and dishonest
banking. Worse yet, a police state will prevent common Americans from protecting
themselves against monetary looting, and punish those who try to do so, while
protecting the acaparadores (political looters) even more than they are being protected
now.” And, the “only antidote” for these oncoming economic and political legitimacy
crises was the “revitalization of the ‘Militia of the several States.’”117
Interestingly, while Vieira claimed that his economic analysis came from von
Mises and Rothbard, it bears more than a striking resemblance to Marx’s analysis.
What Vieira and the Christian Right have apparently done is to move the ownership of
117
Edwin Vieira Jr., “Revitalizing the Militia Can Promote Monetary Reform—Part 1 of 2,” Edwin
Vieira.com, December 12, 2005, at http://edwinvieira.com/edwin19.htm. Edwin Vieira Jr., “Revitalizing the
Militia Can Promote Monetary Reform—Part 2 of 2,” Edwin Vieira.com, December 12, 2005, at
http://edwinvieira.com/edwin20.htm.
64
the means of production out of the capitalist economic system and into the mixed Wall
Street—Federal Reserve System, while assigning the engine of wealth creation to the
political control and manipulation of the financial system by political and financial elites
rather than believing that wealth is created by the capitalist economic system in the
manufacturing sector.
In 2007, Vieira openly called upon then presidential candidate Ron Paul to
champion the cause of revitalizing the “Militia of the several States” in a two-part article.
Vieira argued that Ron Paul, the constitutionalist presidential candidate, should promote
the constitutionally-demanded revitalization of the “Militias of the several States” for the
following reasons: it was constitutionally required; it would put “homeland security” on a
“legally proper and practical foundation;” challenge the driving logic of the “para-
militarization of State and Local police forces” while thwarting “the creation, whether
intentional or accidental, of a National police state in this country;” “restore popular self-
government;” and contribute to the American people enacting other significant political
reforms beyond the restructuring of “homeland security.”
Vieira then proposed that the revitalized militia was necessary and integral to
these restructuring efforts, including the development of parallel currencies (this was
two years before the anarcho-capitalist virtual currency Bitcoin emerged). Vieira argued
that the “likelihood of a collapse of America’s monetary and banking systems in the not-
too-distant future hangs over this country as a sword of Damocles.” The militia would
be the social basis for forming an alternative state-level economy based on gold and
silver to compete with the Federal Reserve System. Vieira envisioned that the militia
“could require their members gradually and methodically to acquire adequate amounts
65
of silver and gold coin, to maintain accounts in ‘electronic’ silver and gold (such as
through or an equivalent service), and to conduct their common business transactions in
silver and gold as well as in, or even in preference to or to the exclusion of, Federal
Reserve Notes. Because the Militia would consist of the vast majority of the general
public, these steps would quickly create a parallel currency system of silver and gold
coinage, actually employed in day-to-day transactions as media of exchange, that could
circumvent, supplement, compete with, and if necessary in (or even before) an
economic calamity altogether replace the Federal Reserve’s fiat currency and the
Treasury’s base-metallic coinage.” 118 Vieira, like Ron Paul, has been a consistent
proponent of the idea that the private sector, working with or without state governments,
should build a parallel, competitive monetary system to compete with and ultimately
replace the Federal Reserve System. 119
Most interesting is Vieira’s idea that the militia would also function as a mutual
aid society and move American society from an individualistic morality to a
communitarian morality. Whether or not this is right-wing fascism , I will leave to the
reader to decide. But, it is clear that Vieira’s expansive conception of the militia makes
118
Edwin Vieira Jr., “Ron Paul and the Militia, Part 1 of 2,” News With Views, November 12, 2007, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin71.htm.
119
Edwin Vieira, Jr., “The State Electronic Gold Currency Plan,” Part 1, News With Views, April 20, 2005,
at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin8.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “The State Electronic Gold
Currency Plan,” Part 2, News With Views, April 25, 2005, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin9.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “The State Electronic Gold Currency
Plan,” Part 3, News With Views, April 29, 2005, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin10.htm.
Alex Newman, “Alternative Currencies,” The New American (John Birch Society), June 10, 2013, at
http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/4477-alternative-currencies. Alex Newman,
“Led by Rep. Ron Paul, Congress Explores Sound Money,” The New American (John Birch Society),
August 3, 2012, at http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/12311-led-by-rep-ron-paul-
congress-explores-sound-money. Jon Matonis, “Parallel Currencies And The Roadmap To Monetary
Freedom,” Forbes, August 7, 2012, at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/08/07/parallel-
currencies-and-the-roadmap-to-monetary-freedom/. Alan Feuer, “The Bitcoin Ideology,” New York Times,
December 15, 2013, at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/sunday-review/the-bitcoin-ideology.html.
66
it a revolutionary force, almost totalitarian, and an instrument of coercion in the hands of
a President.
According to Vieira, because “every able-bodied adult citizen will serve in some
capacity in the Militia, everyone through the force of circumstances will learn to work
with everyone else, and through relationships of mutual reliance and responsibility will
come to be concerned with everyone else’s welfare. Participation in the Militia will teach
Americans—from all social and economic classes, and all walks of life—that their
legitimate interests are often identical, and even more often interdependent; that people
should gain from the community in proportion to what they contribute to it; that the
selfish outlooks of special-interest groups and factions are counterproductive, socially
destabilizing, and unpatriotic; and that unity in a community depends upon instilling in
each member a recognition of his personal duty to every to other member, and through
that recognition creating a spirit of mutual purpose, cooperation, reliance, and trust.” 120
Moreover, Vieira envisioned the militia acting as a major institution for
socialization and enacting social reforms. Vieira suggested that “the Militia will become,
in important part, institutions for promoting true social welfare, primarily on the Local but
also on the State level. Militia units will concern themselves with the economic
condition of their individual members and their members’ families. They will raise
money for those in difficulty, arrange for jobs, and generally act as clearing-houses to
match the needs and skills of some members to the resources and opportunities that
other members can provide. They will assist legal immigrants to assimilate quickly.
120
Edwin Vieira Jr., “Ron Paul and the Militia, Part 1 of 2,” News With Views, November 12, 2007, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin71.htm.
67
And they will even help to socialize troubled youths, by taking them from street gangs
and other undesirable milieux (including the menticidal “public schools”) into the
discipline of Militia training where responsible members of the community will mentor
them in patriotism, constitutionalism, and general civilized behavior.” 121
In his second article recommending that then presidential candidate Ron Paul
enact the revitalization of the “Militia of the several States,” Vieira assigned to this
revitalized militia force the role of executing laws under the command of the
commander-in-chief. This is the most dangerous proposal for an already near-
totalitarian social organization. According to Vieira, he claimed that “Article I, Section 8,
Clause 15 imposes upon the Militia the authority and responsibility ‘to execute the Laws
of the Union’ when ‘call[ed] forth’ for that purpose—the only explicit delegation of such
authority and responsibility anywhere in the Constitution.” Vieira combined that clause
with Article II, Section 2 which designates “The President shall be Commander in
Chief…and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the
United States.” Vieira claimed that these two clauses in combination “provides in so
many words, that the President may employ the Militia to fulfill his oath of office and to
perform his duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’” Vieira argued that
the President and the militia could enact reforms over hostility from Congress. As Vieira
put it, “Many critical reforms that a hostile Congress would not entertain could
nonetheless be effected by the President and the Militia as part of a wide-ranging
program of true ‘homeland security.’ Perhaps the most pressing would be the
121
Edwin Vieira Jr., “Ron Paul and the Militia, Part 1 of 2,” News With Views, November 12, 2007, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin71.htm.
68
implementation of a system of silver and gold currencies, in anticipation of the collapse
of the Federal Reserve System.” 122
I am not a constitutional lawyer, but there is at least one constitutional problem
and one logical problem. The constitutional problem is that Article I pertains to the
enumerated powers of Congress. Thus, it is Congress that is “calling forth the Militia.”
The logical problem is that if Congress is “hostile” to a President’s reforms, why would it
call “forth the Militia” and put it under the control of the President?
But, the larger constitutional problem is that Vieira argues that the militia, having
been called into service by Congress, can be used by the President to execute the laws.
This is a recipe, at minimum, for an authoritarian right-wing dictatorship. The militia, as
Vieira envisions it, is at its core an anti-democratic, anti-pluralist institution. It is a
coercive institution. Vieira’s exposition of the real purpose of the militia is refreshing for
its candor, but also consistent with the Christian Right’s openly coercive philosophy.
Julie Ingersoll noted that both the Christian Reconstructionists and the New Apostolic
Reformation, the two main ideological drivers of the Christian Right, have in common a
commitment to reconstruct America through coercion. 123
In 2010, one year after the emergence of the Tea Party movement and the start
of the second surge of the Patriot militia, Vieira returned to his major themes via a four-
part series that America was headed towards a financial collapse, the Establishment
122
Edwin Vieira, “Ron Paul and the Militia, Part 2 of 2,” News With Views, November 12, 2007, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin72.htm.
123
Julie Ingersoll, “C. Peter Wagner: Dominion Theology and Postmillennialism on NPR,” Huffington Post,
October 7, 2011, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-ingersoll/c-peter-wagner-dominion-theology-and-
postmillennialism-on-npr_b_996000.html.
69
was preparing an extensive police state to cope with massive civil unrest, and that the
revitalization of the “Militia of the several States” was necessary to arrest these
developments. However, Vieira added another twist which was a response to the
awareness that Department of Defense strategic thinkers were beginning to believe that
the DoD would be called upon to deal with massive civil unrest in America following an
economic collapse. Vieira claimed in part two of his series that a study for the U.S.
Army’s War College’s Strategic Studies Institute (Freier’s study discussed above)
posited that massive civil unrest following an economic collapse would likely require that
the Department of Defense deploy the Army and National Guard to quell it.
However, in part one Vieira laid out a scenario of massive unrest and rebellion
which would certainly meet Freier’s definition of a Black Swan event—economic
collapse followed by the loss of public order. According to Vieira, “When America’s
economy slips into the free-fall of hyperinflation or depression, impoverished people will
rebel. First, against ever-worsening conditions, by demanding that public officials
correct the situation. Then, when their protests accomplish little or nothing, they will
rebel against incumbent officials at the next election. Finally, when they discover that
the two major political parties are really one party with an empty cranium and a pair of
duplicitous faces, and that changing the political personalities in office does not
ameliorate the conditions that arise out of the government’s hare-brained economic
policies, they will rebel against this country’s governmental institutions as a whole.”124
Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟Going to the Roots of the Problem Part 1 of 4,” February 21, 2010, at
124
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin206.htm.
70
In his third article he suggested that once the military intervened, they would take
control of the government. Consequently, a properly organized, constitutionally-
grounded militia was required to thwart this scenario. Vieira went even further and
suggested that the rich who profit from the Federal Reserve System “had better start
thinking instead of how they can contribute, in every way they can, to whatever efforts
their fellow citizens are making to prevent that collapse, to fend off the para-militarized
national police state that collapse will turn loose, and to return this country to the rule of
constitutional law. Right now, before time runs out.”125
Vieira’s writings regarding militias providing real “homeland security” and
constituting a force for responding to a government collapse or civil unrest, tracks very
closely with militia rhetoric regarding the “new militia movement.” A July 2002 article at
the Salon website noted that militia icon James ‘Bo’ Gritz, Norm Olson, the former
leader of the Michigan Militia, and John Trochmann, leader of the Militia of Montana, all
endorsed the militia mission of providing counter-terrorism assistance to improve
“homeland security.” A March 2003 article in the local San Francisco Bay Area
newspaper, the Contra Costa Times, reported that militias in northern California were
engaged in counter-terrorism or “homeland security” operations. Judy Thomas wrote in
the Kansas City Star in September 2010, that groups like the Missouri Militia, the
Kansas State Militia, and the Arkansas Militia tout their community service activities and
Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟Going to the Roots of the Problem Part 1 of 4,” February 21, 2010, at
125
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin206.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr. ‟Going to the Roots of the
Problem Part 2 of 4,” News With Views, February 21, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin207.htm. Edwin Vieira, ‟Going to the Roots of the Problem
Part 3 of 4,” News With Views, February 21, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin208.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟Going to the Roots of the
Problem Part 4 of 4,” News With Views, February 21, 2010, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin209.htm.
71
their opposition to racism as a challenge to alleged stereotypes about the militias. A
June 2011 article on the Missouri Militia in the Riverfront Times reported that the militia
trained on scenarios that included “natural disaster, government collapse, civil war,
riots, search and rescue, anarchist revolution, or whatever else.” The Missouri Militia
responded to Thomas’s article by claiming that “We fill a vital gap in our homeland
security,” without ever stating what that gap was. 126
In April 2010, Vieira published a twelve-part series on secession, essentially
arguing that there was a very limited manner that a state could secede under the
Constitution. But, in part nine he again returned to his main concern regarding the two
main threats that Americans must comprehensively prepare for before they secede from
the Union: “an economic catastrophe stemming from the imminent collapse of the
Federal Reserve System, and the imposition of a national para-military police state to
stem the massive social unrest that will arise out of that catastrophe.” 127
In mid-2011, Vieira published a five-part series, “A Cross of Gold,” based on his
October 2010 lecture at the New York-based Committee for Monetary Research &
Education, claiming that not only was the Federal Reserve System in danger of
126
Dan Laidman, “A kinder, gentler militia?,” (Salon.com), Rick A. Ross, July 4, 2002, at
http://www.culteducation.com/reference/militia/militia74.html. Thomas Peele, “California militias revive
their rhetoric,” (Contra Costa Times), Rick A. Ross, March 20, 2003, at
http://www.culteducation.com/reference/militia/militia82.html. Judy L. Thomas, “New breed of militias puts
on a friendlier face, but critics say it’s camouflage,” (Kansas City Star), Rick A. Ross, September 11,
2010, accessed December 18, 2013, at http://www.culteducation.com/reference/militia/militia96.html.
Judy L. Thomas, “Militias seek official sanction as ‘state defense forces,’” (Kansas City Star), Rick A.
Ross, September 11, 2010, at http://www.culteducation.com/reference/militia/militia95.html. Albert
Samaha, “Watch Out: Here Comes the Missouri Militia,” Riverfront Times, June 22, 2011, at
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2011/06/missouri_militia_joplin_tornado_relief.php. Missouri
Militia, “Voices of Reason: An Open Response to the Kansas City Star Article ‘The New Militia,’”
September 2010, accessed December 18, 2013, at missourimilitia.com/VOICESOFREASON(final).doc.
Edwin Vieira, Jr., ‟Thoughts On Part Nine Of ‛A Concurring Opinion,’” News With Views, April 8, 2010,
127
at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin218.htm.
72
imminent collapse, but the international financiers were readying an international Ponzi
scheme to rescue the sinking American Ponzi scheme. Vieira closed his fifth article in
that series by claiming that the American people had to work from the ground-up, in the
same manner as the Christian Reconstructionists want to reconstruct America, to
achieve what Gary North and the right-wing had claimed was necessary since the
1940s—biblical capitalism based on “honest weights and measures.” Vieira urged his
readers, “The present structure is rotten to its very foundations, and even below. It
lacks the capacity to survive—and can claim no right to be saved. A new structure must
be built from the ground up, on a new site, according to a different plan, with better
workmen. If this can be accomplished, then for the first time in generations Americans,
indeed all of mankind, will enjoy honest weights and measures in the monetary field—
and with that reform, will have a realistic hope to restore honest commerce and honest
politics as well.” 128
One year later, Vieira published a four-part series, “A Cross of Debt” based on a
lecture he had given in May 2011 at the New York-based Committee for Monetary
Research & Education. The thrust of his remarks was that “America is now on the road
to her Golgotha [Calvary], leading to her crucifixion.” America was being crucified by an
alliance of “two voracious crime families: avaricious bankers and financial speculators,
on one side, in league with ambitious careerist politicians, on the other.” Vieira blamed
128
Edwin Vieira, Jr., “A Cross of Gold, Part 1,” News With Views, May 10, 2011, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin233.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “A Cross of Gold, Part 2,” News
With Views, May 10, 2011, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin234.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “A
Cross of Gold, Part 3,” News With Views, May 10, 2011, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin235.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “A Cross of Gold, Part 4,” News
With Views, May 10, 2011, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin236.htm. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “A
Cross of Gold, Part 5,” News With Views, May 10, 2011, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin237.htm.
73
the “grotesque size of the National debt” for the “the worst financial crisis in its
history.” 129 Vieira asserted that ordinary Americans were at the mercy of this alliance of
swindlers. As he put it, “The speculators in New York City and their political puppets in
Washington, D.C., are arrayed against the vast mass of Americans, both present and
future, in a conflict that is not amenable to compromise.” Moreover, he argued that Wall
Street and the Federal Reserve were in the process of not only “violating the
Constitution of the United States, but beyond that for overthrowing the Declaration of
Independence” [emphasis in original—italicized and bolded]. In other words, the
American people were to be enslaved in perpetuity because they could never repay
such a huge debt. 130
His third article in the series argued that because they had committed fraud
against the American people in violation of the Constitution, the bankers and the
politicians had committed treason. 131 Vieira’s solution, despite his professed concerns
for the mass of ordinary Americans, was in keeping with the Christian Right’s alliance
with the Wise Use movement, the County Rule movement, and even the Tenth
Amendment advocates to the benefit of their own paymasters—the oil, gas, coal, and
other industries that exploit America’s public lands for huge profits. Vieira’s solution to
the debt crisis, that is, how the American people can pay off a debt they largely owe to
themselves, was to “return ownership, use, and regulatory authority over these lands to
129
Edwin Vieira, Jr., “A Cross of Debt, Part 1 of 4,” News With Views, February 10, 2012, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin244.htm.
130
Edwin Vieira, Jr., “A Cross of Debt, Part 2 of 4,” News With Views, February 10, 2012, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin245.htm.
131
Edwin Vieira, Jr., “A Cross of Debt, Part 3 of 4,” News With Views, February 10, 2012, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin246.htm.
74
the States and private parties, where they belong.” However, should that solution prove
to be “undesirable for sufficient constitutional reasons,” then Vieira proposed a tax on
“all nonproductive ‘financial transactions’ such as ‘credit default swaps’ and other
speculative gambling contracts” with the aim to tax them out of existence; a tax on the
“possession of certain types of non-productive assets held for personal consumption
and use; taxes “aimed at curbing all manifestations of ‘globalism’ and ‘the new world
order’ that are detrimental to the national independence, sovereignty, and security of the
United States;” the latter taxes or duties were aimed at out-sourcing jobs overseas,
capital exported to produce jobs outside the United States, and the import of strategic
goods that could have been produced in the United States; and, a duty imposed on
goods coming from Mexico and Canada to compensate “costs of apprehending and
deporting illegal aliens who have crossed into the United States across the Mexican (or
the Canadian) border.”132
Throughout Vieira’s writings are themes common to the Patriot militia movement
and the Tea Party movement, as well as other movements aligned with the Christian
Right—there will be an economic collapse, the Federal Reserve System is at fault, the
Republican and Democratic parties are working in cahoots with Wall Street to impose a
New World Order on the American people, and a militia is necessary to oppose a
national police state. One can reasonably disagree on the degree to which the Tea
Party either supports or opposes Wall Street, but there is no doubt that Vieira’s strategic
writings were carried into the current iteration of the Patriot militia movement. Nor can
132
Edwin Vieira, Jr., “A Cross of Debt, Part 4 of 4,” News With Views, February 10, 2012, at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin244.htm.
75
there be any doubt that Vieira’s ideas were carried into the “mainstream” of Republican
politics in some test neo-Confederate states.
Vieira’s Ideas Merge Into The Patriot and Tea Party Movements
Delegates to the self-styled “continental congress” reported in their journal
entries that Edwin Vieira’s ideas on the “Power of the Sword” were presented and
eventually adopted by the group. Delegate Ken Lucier from Minnesota reported that
“we considered the ideas presented by Edwin Vieira.” Delegate William Kostric
reported that “They came back with Vieira’s document unchanged but for spelling
corrections which then passed the committee of the whole overwhelmingly to my
dismay.” Since Kostric was referring to “the money clause,” the document in question
must have been “The Power of the Purse.” Kostric also reported that the Second
Amendment Committee considered “two pages of lawyer speak being proposed as
instructions to congress (specifically an offering by Edwin Vieira known as The Power of
the Sword.” James Dowling, a central committee member of Michigan’s U.S. Taxpayers
Party, observed that documents related to the Second Amendment were “submitted
through the Virginia Delegation by Dr. Edwin Vieira.” 133
The “continental congress” apparently produced a 61-page document consisting
of fourteen articles called the “Articles of Freedom.” The summary document provided
highlights that clearly demonstrate that Vieira’s ideas on “The Power of the Sword” and
“The Power of the Purse” were adopted by the Robert ‘Bob’ Schulz-orchestrated
“continental congress.”
133
“Journals of the Continental Congress 2009,” at http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/1742876/journals-
09-16-pdf-february-10-2010-4-58-pm-350k?dn=y.
76
Article four of the “Articles of Freedom” concerning “Militias and Firearms”
instructed the Congress to “abolish the Department of Homeland Security,” return
“responsibility for domestic security to Militias of the several States,” repeal all laws that
“tax, register and regulate the use or transfer of firearms and ammunition, and make
“statutes for organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia.” At the state level, the
“Articles of Freedom” instructed the states to establish an “Advisory Commission on
Revitalization of the Militia,” and local community actions urged activists to “seek
assistance from County Sheriffs in establishing a constitutional Militia.”
Article ten of the “Articles of Freedom” concerned “Money.” At the federal level,
Congress was instructed to enact “a statute establishing a National Advisory
Commission on Alternative and Competitive Currency” which would lead the United
States (and the states) to adopting “gold and silver coin.” Each state was instructed to
also form state-level Advisory Commission on Alternative and Competitive Currency.”
Activists at the local level were advised to begin using gold and silver coins in exchange
and “to be otherwise prepared for the replacement of the unconstitutional Federal
Reserve upon its failure or abolition.” 134
The self-styled “continental congress” staged by Ron Paul’s Campaign for
Liberty, Robert Schulz’s We The People, and Howard Phillips’ Constitution Party issued
its “Articles of Freedom” in November 2009. 135 In April 2010, progressive websites
were reporting that the Oklahoma Tea Party in collaboration with members of the
134
“A Summary of the 14 Articles of Freedom,” at
http://articlesoffreedom.us/ArticlesofFreedom/Summary.aspx.
135
World Net Daily, “‘Continental Congress’ abolishes income tax. Citizens mobilize in spirit ’76 to help
return U.S. to its roots,” November 23, 2009, at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=116996.
77
Oklahoma legislature were recommending the formation of a state militia. What went
unreported was that the proponent of the state militia had attended the “continental
congress.”
Al Gerhart, head of the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance, and J.W. Berry, head
of the Tulsa-based OKforTea, worked with Oklahoma legislators, Charles Key and
Randy Brogdon, to propose creation of a “new militia volunteer militia to help defend
against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty,”
according to a Huffington Post report. Think Progress reported that J.W. Berry had
called President Obama the “‘Muslim President’” and that the militia should “‘launch a
thousand guerrilla attacks on the plans these people have to ruin us and our country.’”
David Neiwert cited an SPLC report that Charles Key was an “anti-government
conspiracy theorist” who had claimed that the federal government had advanced
warning of the Oklahoma City bombing, did nothing to prevent it, and engaged in a
cover-up after the attack. The SPLC also reported that Key had proposed abolishing
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth amendments to the Constitution, opposed the
Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright citizenship, and opposed the use of Shariah law in
Oklahoma courts. And, Key had appeared in a Ron Paul-linked Gary Franchi film,
“Don’t Tread on Me—The Rise of the Republic,” in which Key claimed that the U.S. now
had a “‘tyrannical government.’” Key is also a repeat offender on Alex Jones’
conspiracy radio show. 136
136
Sean Murphy and Tim Talley, “Oklahoma Tea Party Plans To Form Armed Militia,” Huffington Post,
April 12, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/13/oklahoma-tea-party-plans_n_535412.html.
Lee Fang, “Oklahoma Republicans Conspire With Tea Parties To Form Anti-Federal Government Militia,”
Think Progress, April 13, 2010, at http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/13/oklahoma-turner-diaries/. David
Neiwert, “The lessons of history seem not to have stuck for Tea-Partying Oklahomans,” April 13, 2010, at
78
Among the groups belonging to the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance two are key
to the networking—OK-SAFE and OKforTea. Three other organizations, Oklahoma
Second Amendment Association, the Oklahoma Tenth Amendment Center, and the
John Birch Society are representative of its core ideology.
The Tulsa-based OK-SAFE (Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise) is
headed by Amanda Teegarden, dubbed the “Tulsa’s leading lady of the radical right” by
the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the SPLC, Teegarden promotes a
“‘biblical worldview’” for the public school system through her Oklahomans for School
Accountability, and participated in the 2009 Freedom21 conference (see Chapter 3) in
which she opposed the federal-state fusion intelligence centers. In fact, she had been a
featured speaker at the Freedom21 conferences in 2007, 2008, and 2009—giving her
ample time to network with Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, Oklahoma State
Senator Randy Brogdon (2008), Catherine Bleish (a Ron Paul operative who helped run
the May 2009 Jekyll Island Project which led to the November 2009 “continental
congress” which she attended as a delegate), the Ron Paul-linked Gary Franchi of
Restore the Republic, and the Ron Paul-linked G. Edwin Griffin of Freedom Force
International. 137
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/lessons-history-seem-not-have-stuck. Southern Poverty Law
Center, “Grand Jury Concludes No Conspiracy in OKC,” Intelligence Report Winter 1999, at
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/1999/winter/grand-jury-
concludes-no-conspiracy-in. Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Legislators: The Dirty Dozen,” March
2011, at http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/publications/attacking-the-constitution-slli-and-the-anti-
immigrant-movement/the-legislators. Bill Berkowitz, ‟Sedition: Oklahoma Tea Party Want Armed
Voluntary Militia to Combat Feds,” Talk to Action, April 15, 2010, at
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/4/15/133840/898.
137
Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance, Alliance Members, Sooner Tea Party.org, April 15, 2010, at
http://www.soonerteaparty.org/. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Meet the ‘Patriots,’” Intelligence Report
Summer 2010, at http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-
79
OKforTea, headed by J.W. Berry, is a rather radical organization. In its April
2009 newsletter, Berry declared that “patriots” were at war with the federal government.
According to Berry, “We are now the guerrilla warriors in this war. And make no
mistake about it, this is a War…. It is up to us to ensure that the Ballot box works so
there will be no need to appeal to the Bullet box. But this nonsense MUST stop”
[emphasis in original]. 138 In OKforTea’s newsletter number 21, Berry supported jury
nullification—long a proposal of the Posse Comitatus and Patriot movement—and
stated his belief that the Civil War was “Lincoln’s war on the South” fought for “revenue”
and “Nothing to do about Slavery.” Based on his reading of The Turner Diaries, which
he believed was “twisted and racist,” he suggested that the Tea Party movement
oppose the “National Police Force” described in the fictional novel. Berry compared the
Obama administration to the alien invasion force in the movie Independence Day. 139 In
newsletter 22, Berry claimed that the Obama administration included communists and
Muslims, may not have built enough prisons to house all who opposed Obama’s “new
world order,” and that the Obama administration was a “Nazi” regime determined to
disarm the American people. 140 And, in newsletter 24, in which he claimed that
th
issues/2010/summer/meet-the-patriots?p=0,3. Freedom21, “8 Annual Freedom21 National
th
Conference,” July 19-21, 2007, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2007/19.html. Freedom21, “9 Annual
Freedom21 National Conference,” July 24-26, 2008, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2008/24.html.
Freedom21, “National Conference: ‘The Growing American Tyranny and How to Stop It,’” August 13-15,
2009, at http://www.freedom21.org/conf/2009/con-09.html.
138
J.W. Berry, “OkforTea.com News Letter No. 4,” April 21, 2009, at
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_TQvZwccGEcJ:www.okfortea.com/documents/
NewsLetterNo4.doc+site:okfortea.com+militia&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.
139
J.W. Berry, “Newsletter 21,” OKforTea.com, September 7, 2009, at
http://www.okfortea.com/documents/Newsletter-21.php.
140
J.W. Berry, “A State of War,” OKforTea.com Newsletter 22, September 21, 2009, at
http://www.okfortea.com/documents/Newsletter-22.php.
80
President Obama was the “Muslim President” (with a picture of Obama dressed in mufti)
and the “Reincarnation of Pol Pot,” Berry indicated that he was a close follower of Edwin
Vieira’s website, News With Views. 141 In December 2009, the Oklahoma Tenth
Amendment Center, which was part of the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance which
included OKforTea, republished Edwin Vieira’s “The Second Amendment, The States,
and The People” from the John Birch Society’s New American magazine. 142
One of the key organizers for OKforTea was Jai Blevins. A February 2009
Oklahoma report (Red Dirt Report) identified Jai Blevins as a “Tulsa organizer” who was
directly working with State Senator Randy Brogdon, who was promoting his “‘10th
Amendment Sovereignty’” bill. 143 Blevins also communicated for the OKforTea group
using the name “batcot” at okeveryman.com. 144 Interestingly, when Jai Blevins listed
his qualifications for being elected a delegate from Oklahoma for the “continental
congress,” he listed only his membership in Eric Odom’s Alliance for Liberty group, a
major Tea Party promoter, and not OKforTea. 145 Blevins attended the “continental
congress” as a delegate, but apparently did not sign the “Articles of Freedom.” 146
141
J.W. Berry, “The Spirit of 76,” OKforTea.com Newsletter 24, no date but circa October 2009, at
http://www.okfortea.com/documents/Newsletter-24.php.
142
Edwin Vieira, “The Second Amendment, The States, and The People,” Oklahoma Tenth Amendment
Center (originally published at The New American), December 22, 2009, at
http://oklahoma.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2010/03/the-second-amendment-the-states-and-the-people/.
143
Andrew W. Griffin, “Two Oklahoma Cities to Host ‘Tea Party’ for Fed Up Taxpayers,” Red Dirt Report,
February 26, 2009, at http://www.reddirtreport.com/news.php?id=9751.
144
batcot (aka Jai Blevins), “Do NOT Go to the USA Patriots ‘Tax Day Tea Party,’” OK Everyman, March
28, 2010, at http://okeveryman.com/2010/03/28/1509/.
145
Jai Blevins, candidate profile, GiveMeLiberty.org, Oklahoma webpage, at
http://givemeliberty.org/user/congress/Region.aspx?state=ok. This also confirmed his email name as
“batcot.” Alex Brant-Zawadzki and Dawn Teo, “Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement: American Liberty
81
The chain of evidence clearly links the “Power of the Sword” proposal to the
“continental congress,” Jai Blevins to the “continental congress,” Jai Blevins to
OKforTea, OKforTea to the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance, and both groups to the
proposal to form a state militia independent of the National Guard and the Department
of Defense.
Vieira’s proposal, “Power of the Purse,” that was also adopted at the “continental
congress,” was also apparently put into effect in Virginia. But, in this case no linkage
between the “continental congress” and the Virginia proposal can be established as it
was for the Oklahoma militia. However, what we do know, according to a Washington
Post report, is that State Delegate Bob Marshall proposed that Virginia start minting
gold and silver coins as a companion bill he had already proposed that Virginia form a
“study committee to examine alternative currencies to that distributed by the Federal
Reserve System ‘in the event of a major breakdown of the Federal Reserve System.’”
The reporter noted that “Marshall said his intention is to inject competition into the
national economy and force the federal government to change monetary policy he
believes is leading to hyperinflation.” 147 It should be clear that Marshall’s proposal is
quite similar to Vieira’s proposal.
Alliance,” The Huffington Post, December 11, 2009, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-
brantzawadzki/anatomy-of-the-tea-party_b_380626.html.
146
Articles of Freedom.us, “Pledge by the Delegates,” November 11, 2010, at
http://articlesoffreedom.us/TOC/DelegatesPledge.aspx.
147
Rosalind S. Helderman, “Delegate proposes Va. Mint its own money,” Washington Post, January 5,
2011, at
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2011/01/delegate_proposes_virginia_min.html#more.
Jason Linkins, “Virginia Delegate Wants To Bring Back Confederate Money, Or Something,” The
Huffington Post, January 7, 2011, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/07/virginia-delegate-wants-
82
In fact, Rachel Tabachnick and Frank Cocozzelli pointed out that Ron Paul, Pat
Buchanan, and Larry Pratt in October 2013 appeared in a film, Molon Labe: How the
Second Amendment Guarantees America’s Freedom. The film is “about the ‘duty’ of
citizens to keep and bear arms as part of their militia duties.” They quoted the producer
of the film using the exact language Vieira had used to promote his views to Ron Paul:
“‘We the people will never regain the power of the purse or the power of the sword until
and unless we establish the 50 Militias in each and every one of our states.’” Another
film in the series featuring Ron Paul and paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan is called
Cultural Marxism, thus linking Ron Paul to the some of the key ideas promulgated by
the late Paul Weyrich and his main political-military strategist William S. Lind. 148
The Gary North—Ron Paul Strategy
Gary North, who served on Ron Paul’s original congressional staff in the 1970s,
re-emerged in the mid-2000s as his unofficial key strategist. It was North who
described the stealth strategy—published in the open but ignored until I wrote about in
March 2010 at the now defunct politicalchili.com website which was destroyed by
hackers unknown and re-examined by Bruce Wilson at Talk to Action in late 2013. 149
t_n_806089.html. It is clear from the headline that the Huffington Post is clueless regarding the
ideological and strategic intention of the proposal.
148
Rachel Tabachnick and Frank Cocozzelli, “Nullification, Neo-Confederates, and the Revenge of the
Old Right,” Political Research Associates, November 22, 2013, at
http://www.politicalresearch.org/nullification-neo-confederates-and-the-revenge-of-the-old-right/.
149
James Scaminaci III, “On the Origins of the Tea Party Movement—Part IV-G—Ron Paul’s Tea Party
Movement Emerges,” PoliticalChili.com, March 23, 2010, at
http://web.archive.org/web/20100502063334/http://politicalchili.com/2010/03/origins-of-the-tea-party-
movement-part-iv-g/. Bruce Wilson, “Ron Paul Curriculum Author Wants Stoning, Biblical Slavery,” Talk
to Action, September 11, 2013, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2013/9/11/131924/748. Bruce Wilson,
“The Tea Party Plan To Shatter the American Republic,” Talk to Action, October 4, 2013, at
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2013/10/4/112727/355/.
83
In February 2010, I concluded of the North-Paul strategy (presented below): “The
essential elements of Ron Paul’s political strategy are to: de-fund the state at the
federal, state, and local levels; undermine the legitimacy of the state; win control of the
government starting at the local level by replacing (not capturing) the Republican Party’s
precincts; and, ‘roll back the state to its Constitutional limits—its 1791 limits, meaning
the Bill of Rights. All ten of them.’… It is important to bear in mind that North’s strategy
articles and Paul’s announcement of the goals and programs of the Campaign for
Liberty reflect the fact that the online campaign contributions and the ‘postage-free data
base’ of donors represents a ‘stealth’ or ‘under the radar’ virtual structure for mobilizing
activists and supporters, networking at the grassroots level, and the capacity to
‘undermine the legitimacy of the existing political structure.’ In other words, it is vastly
more than atomized donors—it is a virtual and grassroots structure for political warfare.
Each precinct is both a virtual and a grassroots cell—very much like the cell structure of
the John Birch Society—one of the key components of the Ron Paul network.”
In September 2013, Bruce Wilson, the co-founder of the Talk to Action website
which follows the Christian Right closely, stated that the “evidence is compelling” that
the “the strategy that Gary North outlined in 2008 is the very same one that Ron Paul is
now pursuing.” And, Wilson noted that “the master strategy that Gary North outlines is
merely a continuation of an initiative, launched from the dominionist and theocratic
religious right during the late 1980s, to gradually take over the Republican Party, from
the bottom up.” 150 And, in October 2013, Wilson noted the political impasse over the
150
Bruce Wilson, “Ron Paul Curriculum Author Wants Stoning, Biblical Slavery,” Talk to Action,
September 11, 2013, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2013/9/11/131924/748.
84
federal budget and the debt ceiling, had the potential, according to a Department of
Treasury analysis, to freeze the credit markets, make the dollar plummet, make interest
rates skyrocket and could result “‘in a financial crisis and recession that could echo the
events of 2008 or worse.’” Wilson warned, “The stated strategy of one of the key
intellectual architects of the Tea Party suggests that is indeed the plan—go over the
edge and crash the economy, because the resulting chaos would create an
unprecedented political organizing opportunity…. World markets would be shaken to the
core. Across the globe, governments and private investors would shift away from their
support of the dollar as the reserve currency of choice. The American empire would be,
in effect over. And the cadres of Ron Paul, Gary North, and the religious right would roll
up their sleeves and get to work.” 151
Thus, it necessary to examine the North-Paul strategy as it unfolded and to note
at the outset that the purpose of all the Ron Paul organizing and fundraising is to create
both virtual and real-world networks to engage in political warfare at the local level with
the Fourth Generation Warfare goal as its primary objective: undermine the legitimacy
of the federal government in order to take power. North, himself, is familiar with and
explicitly recommended that LewRockwell.com readers examine William S. Lind’s
Fourth Generation Warfare archive of articles on that website. 152
151
Bruce Wilson, “The Tea Party Plan To Shatter the American Republic,” Talk to Action, October 4,
2013, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2013/10/4/112727/355/.
152
Gary North, “Osama Public Agenda and Private Tactic,” LewRockwell.com November 3, 2004, at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north320.html.
85
In June 2007, Gary North wrote that Ron Paul was “the most ideologically
committed politician in the country;” that “Ron Paul supporters are hard-core fanatics;”
that “For years, he had a narrow but highly committed audience. Now, after three
decades, he is beginning to expand that audience.” North also noted that Ron Paul
“had a consistent philosophy of government, meaning, Constitutional government as
understood in 1788.” The first phase of the strategy was “building a digital mailing
list.” 153 Of course, the Constitution of 1788 had no Bill of Rights and African Americans
were three-fifths a person for the census and enslaved.
In his July 2007 article North gave the first glimpse of Phase 2: “Most counties
are dominated by a single political party. So, only masochists or visionaries get
involved with the minority party. What if someone with a huge mailing list, or a series of
mailing lists, were to create a below-the-radar movement for training citizens in the
techniques of high-tech, low-cost political mobilization techniques? The target?
Precincts.”
The July 2007 article outlined what the “small digital minority needs to become a
screaming electoral majority”: “a decades-long vision of victory [later reduced to a few
years]; programs of privately funded welfare; a readiness to de-fund the state;
technologies of communication; technologies of local mobilization; patience; a
153
Gary North, “Ron Paul, the Mahatma,” LewRockwell.com, June 16, 2007, at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north538.html.
86
willingness to labor under the radar; and, a leader who believes in grassroots politics.”
North’s slogan for this strategy was “‘Replacement, not capture.’” 154
In early January 2008, North explained Phase 1 and suggested Phase 2. “In
Phase 1 of Ron Paul’s political strategy he achieved national name recognition among
conservatives and libertarians, raised over $28 million dollars [later FEC figures show
$34 million], assembled a huge database—a postage-free data base—and got network
TV interviews all over YouTube, which are permanent. Nothing like this has ever been
done in the history of libertarianism.” 155
The January 2008 article described “a strategy that involves quietly moving
below the media’s radar.” North characterized his and Ron Paul’s work as a “strategy
for long-term political victory.” He then suggested that “I am willing to post the basics of
this strategy here because I am not posting all of it. It will therefore get no attention
from the mainstream news media. This article is ‘hidden in plain site.’ It is sufficient
that a hard core of his hard corps see it here and forward it to friends. My
recommended strategy begins with word of mouse.”
According to North, this new grassroots movement had “a decade, if things go
well—less if they don’t.” The “central premise of my recommended strategy” was a
foreseeable financial catastrophe: “The Federal government are [sic] facing bankruptcy.
The Federal Reserve System is going to have to fund the Federal government with fiat
154
Gary North, “Ron Paul and the Greased Pig,” LewRockwell.com, July 28, 2007, at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north552.html.
155
Gary North, “Phase 2 of Ron Paul’s Political Strategy,” LewRockwell.com, January 9, 2008, at
http://www.garynorth.com/public/2928.cfm.
87
money. When Medicare goes bust and Social Security follows, the Federal Reserve will
inflate…. When checks from Washington no longer buy much, there will be a
monumental political transformation.” Later in the article North suggested the reason for
haste: “We are in a race against the falling dollar.”
North recommended a political theme for this new movement: “‘Fed up?’” As
part of a home-schooling program to educate activists he recommended a curriculum
designed around the theme of “‘the hijacking of America’” [emphasis in original]. This
hijacking took place “in education, in art, in literature, in economics, in science, in the
media” and in the “dark side of fractional reserve banking and the Federal Reserve
System.” 156 North’s analysis of the institutions that were hijacked mirrors the need for
Christians to retake the Seven Mountains of society.
North suggested a strategy of “stealth politics” in which Ron Paul supporters
operating in the 3,000+ precincts could “run against and replace local officials.” It is
important to remember that North’s strategy is to infiltrate the Republican Party and
subvert it from within by replacing moderate or insufficiently conservative Republican
staff and elected officials.
North outlined the strategic, revolutionary goal of the movement: “If Ron Paul will
provide the leadership, he can spearhead a national movement whose goal is to roll
back the state to its Constitutional limits—its 1791 limits, meaning the Bill of Rights. All
ten of them. This movement must be based on a systematic, well-thought-out
campaign to roll back the civil government in every area of life in which it is operating
156
Gary North, “Phase 2 of Ron Paul’s Political Strategy,” LewRockwell.com, January 9, 2008, at
http://www.garynorth.com/public/2928.cfm.
88
unconstitutionally” [emphasis added]. 157 As Bruce Wilson noted, “in 1791 the
Constitution and Bill of Rights allowed for legal slavery and did not provide for women’s
suffrage.” 158
Part of this strategy of “stealth politics” was working in opposition to all local
efforts to fund government or the federal government helping fund local governments.
According to North, “The primary goal is to get positioned locally with numerous officials
so as to present a united front against the Federal government when it begins to falter.
When the Feds’ money buys nothing, the hard corps [sic] needs to be influential locally
to block all attempts of the Feds to impose controls over the local economy.” North
recommended that activists form five-person groups (cells?) in each precinct to contest
federal funding efforts—what North termed a “disaster.” This propaganda and political
operational cell would “Raise doubts. Maybe add an amendment that guts it. But,
election by election, move the precinct toward limited government…. The goal is to raise
doubts at key points, calling into question the messianic state, program by program,
budget by budget…. Focus on local issues…. Get experience. Get support. Get
respect. Then get elected, or get some future Ron Paul elected.” North outlined the
long-term “primary goal,” that is, what should happen when the financial crisis comes.
In that scenario North wanted the Ron Paul movement to “to get positioned locally with
numerous officials so as to present a united front against the Federal government when
it begins to falter. When the Feds’ money buys nothing, the hard corps needs to be
157
Gary North, “Phase 2 of Ron Paul’s Political Strategy,” LewRockwell.com, January 9, 2008, at
http://www.garynorth.com/public/2928.cfm.
158
Bruce Wilson, “Ron Paul Curriculum Author Wants Stoning, Biblical Slavery,” Talk to Action,
September 11, 2013, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2013/9/11/131924/748.
89
influential locally to block all attempts of the Feds to impose controls over the local
economy. This has been known historically as the doctrine of interposition.”159
Thus, what North and other Christian Reconstructionists had written about in
1983—opposition to federal tyranny led by lesser magistrates—is now an integral and
foundational part of the Ron Paul/Tea Party movement strategy. And, given Lind’s and
Vieira’s writings, there can be no doubt that the extant Patriot militia is part of that local
infrastructure to resist the federal government’s efforts to maintain its complete
sovereignty over the territory of the United States. Nor should there be any doubt that
Ron Paul-linked organizations like Save Our Sheriff, The Sheriff’s Project, and Oath
Keepers, are integral to this effort to contest the legitimacy of the federal government
and execute a policy of interposition. And, it shall be shortly explicitly clear that North’s
strategy is, in fact, Fourth Generation Warfare.
For North, in order to “get positioned” the “hard core of the hard corps activists”
had to be tutored in “local political training.” They had to learn “how to become
influential in a precinct.” The activists “must be trained to monitor all tax hikes and bond
issues and mobilize against them.” “Local activists must be trained in stealth tactics.” 160
Later in the January 2008 article, North stated clearly the strategic objective, the
“supreme goal” of undermining the legitimacy of the state: “Precinct by precinct, town
by town, county by county, a decentralized political movement could begin to undermine
159
Gary North, “Phase 2 of Ron Paul’s Political Strategy,” LewRockwell.com, January 9, 2008, at
http://www.garynorth.com/public/2928.cfm.
160
Gary North, “Phase 2 of Ron Paul’s Political Strategy,” LewRockwell.com, January 9, 2008, at
http://www.garynorth.com/public/2928.cfm.
90
the legitimacy [of (sic)] the existing political structure. It can do so politely, helpfully, and
sympathetically. The central issue is legitimacy. The supreme goal is to undermine the
legitimacy enjoyed by the prevailing central state. This task is doable. We have the
U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve System working for us: a debt disaster to be
funded by fiat money. When the dollar dies, political legitimacy dies with it. This is the
central premise of my recommended strategy” [emphasis added]. 161 The “central
premise” of North’s strategy—“undermine the legitimacy enjoyed by the prevailing
central state”—is in fact, the central objective of Fourth Generation Warfare.
In a later article in January 2008, North reported that Phase 1 was over. The
Ron Paul presidential campaign had achieved “100,000 email addresses of supporters.”
These supporters, North hoped, would now form a “national cadre of volunteers who are
ready to commit for at least a decade of hard, boring work in the trenches of local
politics.” 162
In mid-June 2008, six months after North had outlined the basic principles and
objectives of the North-Paul strategy, Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty was announced
by Ron Paul. Ron Paul promised “new and exciting projects,” as well as pledging to
“design materials for homeschoolers,” to “expand the great work of our precinct leader
program,” and to have “100,000 members by September” who would constitute a
“permanent…. grassroots campaign” that would “make our presence felt at every level
161
Gary North, “Phase 2 of Ron Paul’s Political Strategy,” LewRockwell.com, January 9, 2008, at
http://www.garynorth.com/public/2928.cfm.
162
Gary North, “Ron Paul’s Summer Soldiers and Sunshine Patriots Will Go Home on September 5. The
Hard Corps Will Stay. Phase 2 Will Begin,” Gary North.com, January 18, 2008, at
http://www.garynorth.com/public/2963.cfm.
91
of government.” 163 The very next day, North applauded the announcement of the
Campaign for Liberty and pledged to work on three tasks: educate Americans on the
need for free markets, a homeschooling curriculum, and “expand[ing] the great work of
our precinct program.” While North provided links to his articles regarding the first two
tasks, the third task’s article was only available to subscribers to his newsletter. 164
Conclusion
Previous chapters established that it was the Christian Right that was largely
responsible for establishing the Patriot militia in the mid-1990s. Moreover, the strategic
plan for the Patriot militias had actually been developed by William S. Lind as part of his
writings on Fourth Generation Warfare. The Ron Paul- and Robert Schulz-backed
meeting at Jekyll Island in mid-2009 kick-started the revival of the Patriot militias,
though it was a previous meeting held by Schulz’s We The People in 2004 that
produced low-level reactivations of the extant militias. Thus, in terms of strategic writing
and personnel and organizational linkages, previously chapters have established that
the Patriot militias are, in fact, the armed wing of the Christian Right—just as Frederick
Clarkson had suggested in 1997.
This chapter has shown that at the strategic level, both the Christian Right and
the Patriot militias believe they will come to power following a collapse of the Federal
Reserve System with its associated private Wall Street banks, hedge funds, and other
163
Ron Paul, “Ron Paul’s Goal: 100,000 By September,” AFL-CIO.org, June 13, 2008, at
http://www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/labor2006/TX.cfm.
164
Gary North, “Ron Paul Announces Phase 2,” Gary North.com, June 14, 2008, at
http://www.garynorth.com/public/3617.cfm.
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non-bank financial entities. While Christian Right strategists may not have the
particulars correct, libertarian, liberal and progressive economists and financial analysts
also believe that a potentially system-threatening, catastrophic financial collapse almost
certainly will happen. What makes a financial crisis into a catastrophic collapse is the
fact that the U.S. economy is largely based on the profits of a financial sector whose
liabilities dwarf the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Moreover, given changes in
bankruptcy law that enable the Wall Street banks to seize the deposits of citizens, as
well as local and state governments to cover their losses from derivatives trading, the
financial collapse of one or more Wall Street financial entities threatens to leave
Americans destitute and cities unable to make even payroll.
The purpose of the militias, as militia strategist Edwin Vieira wrote, is to provide
security and order following a catastrophic financial collapse. Moreover, they will
undoubtedly work with other components of the Christian Right and Tea Party networks
to contest the legitimacy of the federal government at the local level.
This chapter clearly established that the central objective of Fourth Generation
Warfare—to contest the legitimacy of the federal government following a series of
crises, military, political and financial—is exactly the same as the North-Paul strategy.
North’s strategic writings for Ron Paul clearly identify that the “central premise” of the
strategy is to contest the legitimacy of the federal government when it “falters.”
Fourth Generation Warfare is the strategy that the Christian Right has pursued
since the 1970s or 1980s. That is not surprising, as Bruce Wilson pointed out, because
the key strategists of the Christian Right—Paul Weyrich, Howard Phillips, and Gary
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North—have collaborated since the 1970s. It is also not surprising considering that
Paul Weyrich hired William S. Lind, one of John Boyd’s closest collaborators on
epistemological warfare, and the seminal thinker on Fourth Generation Warfare.
In the next chapter, the National Precinct Alliance, Save Our Sheriff, The Sheriff’s
Project, and Oath Keepers—all organizations that spawned nationwide networks—
sprang directly from the 2008 Ron Paul presidential campaign with a very high
probability that they were, in fact, part of the secret North-Paul strategy. Not only are
the four organizations derived from the North-Paul strategy, the latter three
organizations are engaged in Fourth Generation Warfare against the federal
government. Their purpose quite simply is to contest the legitimacy of the federal
government at the local level by subverting from within local sheriffs’ departments, local
police departments, the state police, federal law enforcement, and the U.S. military,
while also promoting the legitimacy-contesting policies of interposition, nullification, and
secession. Thus, we move from strategic writings to organizational implementation, that
is, creating the organizations and networks necessary to implement the strategic plans.