---SNIP---

Literally, these people believe might makes right - or more correctly might makes rights. Their rights, not yours.

Those militiamen occupying Malheur Wildlife Refuge are little different from the mobs of armed men currently roaming Somalia or Iraq or Syria. They are lawless thugs, nothing more. They want you to believe they are defending freedom, defending America, defending their twisted and simplistic interpretation of the Constitution.

They’ve turned the Second Amendment into a religion, a bizarre sexual fetish, into mental illness.

But those guns? The ones they’re so proud of? Those weapons are not turned to defense of the nation. They’re not aimed at some foreign invader. They’re aimed at you.

They’re aimed at the United States of America.

These militias exist solely for one reason: to shoot down Americans.

They are not preparing to face some foreign invader. They are not standing in defense of their countrymen. In point of fact, they declared us, you and me, their enemy. This is the face of the modern militia movement, just the same as any ISIS fighter who would shoot down Americans in the name of ideology. Same as any Muslim extremist, these militiamen hate the American government, they hate liberals, they hate gays, and they hate those who don’t adhere to their particular religion. These are racists, homophobes, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, sexists, and bigots of every stripe and bitter flavor – don’t take my word for it, go read their statements in their own words. These are fake soldiers who pretend valor they never earned. These are drunks and murderers, liars and cheats, wife beaters and tax dodgers, and blustering cowards. They are busy fighting amongst themselves, literally murdering each other, and raging against illusionary tyranny that exists only in their fevered imaginations.

These are not patriots.

They do not believe in democracy.

They do not believe in the republic.

They do not stand with the rest of us against the fall of night.

They believe in guns and violence and brutality. They are a howling mob and nothing more.

These are nothing less than self-declared enemy combatants who intend violent overthrow of the United States government. They fully intend to impose their idea of America, their idea of who is and is not an American, their idea of religion and race and sexuality, their idea of freedom and liberty and happiness, on the rest of us by force of arms or gun us down in cold blood if we will not submit.

They intend civil war.

They intend civil war, no less. If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is listen to their rhetoric. All you have to do is read their websites and manifestos. All you have to do is listen to their endless threats of violence and look where it is directed.

All you have to do is take them at their own words.

They are not patriots.

A gun doesn’t make you a patriot.

A patriot is someone who rallies to the defense of country, of community, of civilization. In the American tradition, a patriot is a citizen soldier, a minuteman, a reservist, a guardsman, one who turns out in the dark of night, in the most bitter of winters, sworn to defense of the United States when called.

---SNIP---