Ultimatum to the Governors

According to noon news reports, at least thirty state governors, Republican and Democratic alike, have received letters from an organization known as the Guardians of the Free Republics, demanding that they resign within three days. Investigators say that they're unaware of any explicit threat of violence linked to these letters, which they now expect all fifty governors to receive, but common sense says that there has to be an implicit "or else" in such communications.

Google "Guardians of the Free Republics" and you get two possible destinations. One is pretty dodgy looking, demanding that you click an "accept" button before you see any content. The other looks like the real deal, or at least it's the one reporters have looked at before describing the group as advocates of a "Restore America" plan. The home page affirms that the "Guardians" are dedicated to "behind-the-scenes peaceful reconstruction of the de jure institutions of government without controversy, violence or civil war." On the other hand, the Restore America Plan was supposedly drafted "[a]fter consultation with high ranking members of the United States armed forces." Are these consultants expected to assist in implementing the plan?

What is the plan? It seems to consist of dismantling the federal government (aka "the territorial jurisdiction United States Federal Corporation (corp. ref. 28 U.S.C. 3002) posing as the de jure United States of America."), and reducing the nation to a state of common-law anarchy without licensing, registration or other "intrusive" regulations. We seem to be looking at paleo-conservatives here as opposed to neos or unmodified conservatives. You can tell the difference when the Guardians wish to "Restore the People’s money and wealth from the banking institutions, war profiteers, and international loan sharks." The key phrase there is "war profiteers," a category most other American conservative types don't recognize. Likewise, one of the Guardians' motivations is to prevent "World War III" from breaking out, a conflict they must expect us to start unless they intervene in time.

While many conservatives claim to want to return to the Constitution in its original form, the Guardians appear to find even that too confining. Their Plan will "Issue orders to the military and police powers to enforce the Peoples’ divine rights of birth," rather than their constitutional rights. A similarly spiritual note emerges when they demand an end to "all taxes on the sacred rights of labor and privacy."

The Guardians' statement of their "rationale" gets more spiritual yet. Here's a sample:

[W]e constructed “The unanimous Declaration of the sovereign People of the united States of America to restore and reinhabit the free American Republics” to be a shining covenant with the Creator. His charging the People with dominion over all the earth in the Book of Genesis is declared in the very first paragraph as the foundation for the restoration. In so doing, the Declaration is established in history as a genuine covenant with the Creator in honor of the Law.

Some of this rhetoric jibes with what I've seen at the few Tea Party-like events I've visited, particularly the Guardians' emphasis on grand juries as the ultimate sovereign entities. Also familiar is the opinion that the Constitution began to get out of control around 1860, which means they have issues with the post-Civil War amendments -- with they way they were ratified, they'd probably claim, rather than with their content. What seems to distinguish the Guardians is their aspiration to be an invisible power, a kind of counter-illuminati dedicated to Restoring the ancient republic "quietly, efficiently and quickly without provoking controversy, ridicule, violence or civil war....in a manner designed to get results, not glory." In their best case scenario, they'd dismantle the bad state gradually, without people noticing, and without telling anyone about it. They claim that their strategy mirrors the manner in which the bad statists gradually imposed tyranny on America without twirling their moustaches and cackling maniacally, so to speak. Of course, the quiet part has been blown out of the water by the publicization of their letters to the governors, and if they thought that these communications would be conducted away from public scrutiny, the tactical soundness of their "war college restoration strategy" isn't really that sound. However, they did anticipate such exposure.

And in the event the process should ever fall under public scrutiny, the unanimous Declaration was written to be a shining beacon of reason, history and forgiveness. It even looks like, sounds like, and cites the original Declaration of Independence as its authority so that condemnation of the Restoration is also condemnation of the original Revolution. The Restore America Plan is protected by the very Declaration of Independence upon which it was modeled.

As for the "Unanimous Declaration of the Sovereign People of the United States," here it is. For the moment, so long as the Guardians haven't threatened violence, they may be treated as no more than well-organized cranks. But their insinuation that a usurpation of power will take place behind the scenes, and most likely in military ranks first, should focus federal attention on anything peculiar that might happen in the next few weeks. The Guardians have already missed their original March 31 deadline for takeover, but the letters, perhaps late in arriving, still announce an intent to commit a coup d'etat, no matter how bloodless they hope it will be. If there is a conspiracy involving "high ranking" military people, it needs to be tracked down. If it's all an elaborate and slightly mistimed April Fool's hoax, then the laugh's on me and everyone else in the news media. But it looks otherwise, and in the end, the joke's more likely to be on the Guardians.