An Armed Insurrection Over Health Care Decision?

By Matt Gertz, Media Matters for America

01 July 12

ike Vanderboegh, the ex-militia blogger who calls himself one of the "midwives" of the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, recently predicted that if the Supreme Court declared the health care reform bill to be constitutional, it would lead to violent insurrection against "government tyranny."

The blogger posted the statements, which come from a recent unpublished interview, the same day the House of Representatives voted to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt over his unwillingness to release documents related to Fast and Furious.

In the excerpts Vanderboegh posted on his blog "which deal with the decision today," he says of a then-potential decision upholding the health care law, "You may call tyranny a mandate or you may call it a tax, but it still is tyranny and invites the same response." He further predicts the response of his ilk: "If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed - unless we kill them first. ... I am on record as advocating the right of defensive violence against a tyrannical regime."

Vanderboegh gained fame in 2010 when he urged his readers to respond to the passage of health care reform by breaking the windows of Democratic offices, then took credit after vandals struck several such offices. The Alabama-based blogger has previously been part of the militia and Minuteman movements, and leads the Three Percenters, a group which claims to represent the three percent of gun owners who "who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act" but will instead, "if forced by any would-be oppressor, ... kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution."

Vanderboegh was one of the first to break the story that ATF whistleblowers said that they had been ordered to knowingly allow gun trafficking suspects to take weapons across the border into Mexico. The operation was intended to allow law enforcement to identify other members of the trafficking network that for years has directed assault weapons into the hands of Mexican cartels, with the goal of bringing those cartels down. He has said that he and a fellow blogger were the "midwives of the scandal" who introduced the whistleblowers to congressional investigators. He has theorized that the operation was part of a secret plot against the Second Amendment directed from the highest levels of government.

Last year Fox repeatedly hosted Vanderboegh on their air to provide expert commentary on the story. Then in November, four Georgia men were arrested in connection with an alleged plot to kill federal employees and civilians using explosives and the biological agent ricin. According to the criminal complaint against him, one of the alleged domestic terrorists repeatedly cited Vanderboegh'snovel Absolved as the inspiration for their plot. Media subsequently noted that Vanderboegh had, in the words of the Associated Press, "appeared as a commentator on Fox News Channel." He has not done so since.

Vanderboegh's exchange with the unnamed reporter from today's blog post:

Question: You said in an interview with the Washington Post that a handful of Americans "are armed and are capable of making such resistance possible and perhaps even initiating a civil war." Would you support a civil war over health care law?

"Initiating a civil war" is a misquote. All of my work has been focused on preventing a civil war by making the clueless understand that one is possible. Their Weltanschauungs prevent it. I'm trying to get them to understand that we are in fact two countries now. We share a common language (most of us) and border, but we disagree on the critical question that the Founders answered with defensive violence against King George's violence - shall the people serve the government of the government serve the people? Does it matter if we agree on traffic laws or the rules by which our kids play soccer if we disagree on something so fundamental? The health care law carries with its meeching platitudinous promises the hard steel fist of government violence at the center. If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed - unless we kill them first. It is Nancy Pelosi who first plunked the threat of violence on the table like Goering reaching for his revolver. How should principled, free people react to such threats? I am on record as advocating the right of defensive violence against a tyrannical regime. The Founders would agree. If someone on the street threatens to break into my house and steal my property or kill me, and I tell them, "If you do this, you will be killed," am I the violent one? Or is it merely good manners to warn the miscreant of the probable outcome?

I was once asked by a gun prohibitionist my thoughts on his desire for my disarmament. I began to explain as best I could and he cut me off with an impatient, "Give me the short answer." "Okay," I said after pausing briefly, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you." He left quickly, muttering oaths about my sanity. Yet you will get the same answer from that other half of the country that such people make no attempt to understand, only deride and name-call. Such ignorance can get a whole lot of people killed. That is the point I'm trying to get across. If the Constitution as crafted by the Founders and the rule of law no longer applies, that is, if we now have the law of the jungle, then my half of the country is far better prepared to live and thrive in that jungle others force into than they are. Another formulation: If the rule of law no longer protects us from government tyranny, it no longer protects that tyranny and its acolytes from us. It is a two-way street and I hope desperately that Nancy Pelosi and her ilk understand that before it is too late.

Question: What are your thoughts about how the Supreme Court will rule on health care Thursday? What do you see as the potential implications of its decision?

See above. If the individual mandate is upheld, me and a few million of my friends will not comply and we will make ourselves so obnoxious in our refusal that sooner or later some government agent is going to try to kill us. Because the one thing a tyrant cannot tolerate is the example of someone being unafraid and saying "No." It's a bad example for the rest of the sheep and might encourage noncompliance. When that happens, you have only to read history to predict the outcome. To believe anything else is to whistle past the graveyard of history.