Patrick Henry: Enemy of the State

Anti-Federalists “a Threat”

If you support individual freedom and constitutional rights or believe the federal government is corrupt and tyrannical, you may be a terrorist threat.

In today’s America, people who share the political views of Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, James Monroe, and Thomas Jefferson are considered enemies of the state. A study published by the Combatting Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy at West Point warns America about these “far right” people who support such threatening ideas as “civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government.”

The West Point center usually focuses on Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists, but evidently those who would restrain the tyrannical power of the US Government are a threat they can’t ignore. It says anti-federalists

espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights. Finally, they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self-government.

It isn’t surprising that our government, founded on the very concepts of individual liberty and limitation of state power, would identify these concepts as a threat to its existence. That’s because they are. The founders believed that the state was inherently power-hungry and by nature the enemy of individual liberty, so they sought to limit its power by the constitution.

The report states that there were 350 “attacks initiated by far-right groups/individuals” in 2011, but says nothing about left-wing terrorists like the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front, and Weather Underground.

Of course, if the objective of the state is to increase its own power, it makes sense not to draw attention to left-wing terrorists who support greater state intervention in society. You see, individual liberty is the antithesis of state power, and any opposition to tyranny is a greater threat than violence in support of the state. In other words, opposition to state power is bad, but support of state power is good, even when violent.

So now we’re down to the meat of the coconut. Anyone who upholds individual liberty and limited government is in fact an enemy of the state. But that’s the point. Those are the founding principles of the United States.

~SnoMan