America is under violent attack from within by a growing number of armed extremists. Loyalty to country has become a quaint anachronism in some circles. Antidemocratic armed militias started to grow immediately after President Obama's election and have continued to grow. Gun sales have boomed. So has the influence of antidemocratic right-wing culture warriors who espouse a vision for America that would begin by tearing up the U.S. Constitution, root and branch, to create their twisted version of an American Dream. Supposedly mainstream Republican candidates speak about states seceding as though it might be perfectly OK and speak of resorting to armed violence, if they can't get what they want at the ballot box, as if it's perfectly OK.
Violent resistance to government authority isn't just an idea on the fringe of the GOP. According to Mother Jones, almost Everyone on the Far Right Loves Militia-Backed Rancher Cliven Bundy. Also relevant and instructive is angry marmot's brilliant recent post exposing the non-existent credentials of a "Christian Reconstructionist libertarian culture warrior". The post gives a frightening peek at one of these culture warriors, a secretive, shifty, well funded, self-anointed and self-styled security expert with a completely phony claim to any genuine expertise. He crawls the halls of Congress and K Street with a fairly overt agenda of overturning the government of the United States as we know it.
The entire population of the GOP bubble, other than Glenn Beck (who doesn't like it when his peeps too openly oppose the government with force), seems to enthusiastically support the violent resistance going on in Nevada where Cliven Bundy is freeloading on federally owned land. Ask yourself what it is that Republicans, apparently in great numbers, are supporting? Then follow me out into the tall grass to consider the answer.
They support this:
They support sedition.
18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
Way too many of the base of the Republican Party are no longer loyal to America. Worse yet, they appear to think that violent opposition to government is perfectly OK. Though they are a decided minority of the national population, they would see the entire country turned into something it has never been and was never intended to be. They want to destroy America in order to save America.
When they become public servants, which they often seek to be, they obstruct, defund, neglect and, bit by bit, destroy government from within. Exhibit A: The 113th Congress. Exhibit B: The 112th Congress. With growing numbers of people approving of armed resistance and opposition by force against government, it could be asked, as it was during the Cold War, whether steps to secure the loyalty of public employees ought to be taken.
I hate what Tail-gunner Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn and their fellow travelers did back in the day to abuse the liberty of Americans whose only offense was to fight for social justice. I hate the way that loyalty oaths were used, really abused during that Era of American History. Among other shameful things like black lists and illegal surveillance, Cold War Era loyalty oaths were shams used not to assure loyalty to government but rather to suppress dissent and nonconformity. More importantly, the supposedly violent Communist threat against the government that ostensibly justified threatening people's civil rights, the Red Menace, didn't actually exist. Cold War Era loyalty oaths earned a bad reputation. They were vague, unjustifiably broad and misused for antidemocratic purposes. That's what happens when extreme and oppressive measures are imposed to fight non-existent threats.
Our times may be different. Violent threats against government are growing in seriousness and frequency. Power, influence and potential for violence is a growing threat from Christian Reconstructionist Libertarian Culture Warriors, armed private militias, organized neo-fascist county sheriffs, posse comitatus extremists, the sovereign citizen movement and other dangerous forces, most well equipped with small arms. Many of these loosely affiliated groups appear to overlap at various places with various Tea Party groups and with one another. As illustrated by the reporting in angry marmot's diary, these very dangerous people affiliate informally in many guises, under many, constantly changing names, with obscure sources of obviously substantial funding and with significant political access. What these people tend to very much have in common is that they are very well supplied with small arms and ammunition and that they share a vision of America that requires them to overthrow the government to attain. Time and again, these people speak very specifically about their intentions. Many of them openly blog about this stuff. The America of these people's dreams would be a nightmare for all but the small minority they represent (and probably horrible for most of them, too).
What is their vision for America? Consider the views of the late Bobby Franklin from the Georgia House of Repesentatives until his death in 2011:
One of the better known congregants of Morecraft's Chalcedon Presbyterian Church is Rep. Bobby Franklin who has served as the state representative of the 43rd District of Georgia (north Cobb County) since 1996. Franklin argues that the Tea Party should be focused on the illegality of taxes and other federal powers he claims are not constitutional, as opposed to concerns about reducing taxes. Franklin wishes to abolish: drivers licenses (calling it the Right to Travel Act); public schools; income taxes; and mandatory vaccinations. He has introduced a bill to make gold and silver the only legal tender, a bill relabeling rape victims as "accusers" in Georgia statutes and a bill that would require women to provide evidence that their miscarriages occurred naturally or face felony charges.
Franklin was recently quoted in the Marietta Daily Journal as equating allowing homosexuals to serve in the military to allowing unrepentant drug dealers in the military. Franklin is author of the "Georgia Food Freedom Act" and "Georgia Right to Grow Act." In the Marietta Daily Journal article titled "East Cobb Rep Franklin takes on gays gold goats and God," Franklin states,
"Cobb County, in its Soviet style central planning, has deemed that you have to have two acres just to have a chicken."
Franklin ads,
"We've really adopted all 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto in one form or another in this country."
During the Cold War, the events of the McCarthy Era and misdirected anticommunist sentiment gave loyalty oaths a bad name by abusing the idea of loyalty to suppress dissent about the capitalist system. During that Era, the Supreme Court decided a number of cases overturning numerous state and federal loyalty oath laws, but never overruled the right of the sovereign state and federal governments to require loyalty from employees. Likewise, a government can expect the loyalty of its inhabitants, at least to the extent that citizens must eschew all force in their dealings with government, as, for example, the sedition statute, above, says.
Voters may elect dangerous maniacs such as the late Rep. Bobby Franklin. But the sovereign federal government and the sovereign states should consider not employing people who wish to destroy government. The 1st Amendment narrowly limits the kind of loyalty a government employer may exact from its employees and special protection may exist where academic freedom is involved. Nevertheless, loyalty requirements in government employment have never been put under a blanket constitutional prohibition. If it does not too vaguely describe what the employee must or may not do, and addresses only conduct intended to attack or resist the government with force, a loyalty requirement for government employment can be valid.
The widely reprinted photo above depicts someone committing a felony under federal law, specifically, sedition. He and others, at least locally, seek to usurp the authority of the federal government. He is acting intentionally. Surely the government has the right to ask its citizens, and, even more so, its employees, to not oppose the government violently. Surely persons inclined to do such things are high risk for being very poor public servants.
I recognize that it's a political nonstarter for anyone to propose anything like a loyalty oath to sort out the civil service to prevent internal subversion of the government from people who favor violence as a tool for change. It's really a terrible idea, I suppose. Still, it's difficult to deny that having violence prone anti-government zealots inside the government can only threaten it from within.
Public employers do have the the ability to correct misconduct by employees after the fact. One can only hope that such enforcement proves sufficient to protect government's legitimate interests in loyal service from its employees.
Still, an entire political party is succumbing to the poisonous idea that it's OK to resist the government by force. If sedition becomes the fashion, what extreme outrage comes next?