Daily Bell: Oath-Keeper Stewart Rhodes on the rise of authoritarianism and how law enforcement can take a stand for freedom

Today's reading, from the Daily Bell - Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, interviewed by the Daily Bell. An excerpt:

Daily Bell: Do law enforcement officials perceive the problems that you perceive? How many? The majority? What do the FBI and the ATF think of your organization? Have you heard from them?

Stewart Rhodes: Many rank and file police officers understand what is going on, and are very much aware of how the Bill of Rights has been relentlessly eroded. I don't know what percentage are awake. I'd like to say it was half, but I think it is less than that. But that is the point of my organization – to wake them up, and the percentage that are awake and aware, and studying the Constitution, is growing. The efforts of Oath Keepers Board Member Sheriff Mack, in particular, are making real headway among the police and sheriffs. In addition to many active duty police and sheriffs personnel who have become members, we now have several current serving police officers within our Oath Keepers state leadership. And for each officer who openly joins Oath Keepers, I think it is safe to say that there are hundred and perhaps thousands more who are of like mind, but who prefer to stay under the radar by not joining. So I can say without a doubt we are making an impact. The same is true among the military.

As for the federal officers, we have not heard directly or officially from the FBI or ATF, but we have heard from FBI agents, through intermediaries, who tell us that many among the rank and file are sympathetic to our position, but they also tell us that the powers that be in Washington are not happy, and would love to try to make us look like a militia, such as the Hutaree, so they can more easily discredit us. We intend to make it hard for them to do that.

One interesting bit of "intel" we got was from someone within the NSA who told us that the "powers that be" are "concerned about the Oath Keepers effect if/when they decide to give certain orders, but have no way to quantify that effect." In other words, we are like an iceberg: there is a very visible, credible "tip" of active duty who have stepped up and signed their John Hancock by joining, but there are many more who have not joined, and are thus the great mass under the surface that is hard to quantify. "They" don't, and can't, know how big that mass is until they test it. I like causing that kind of uncertainty in the minds of the self-anointed power elites. Hopefully it will make them hesitate to attempt to pull the plug, thus buying us more time.

Daily Bell: Here are some points you and other Oath Keepers adhere to and some questions regarding these points: You will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people. Why not – what makes you believe this will be a problem?

Stewart Rhodes: Once a people are disarmed, they are nearly defenseless against oppression. That is something our forefathers understood, and it was the attempt to disarm them that finally led to the fighting that kicked off our Revolutionary War. Add to that example the many examples since of disarmed populations being tyrannized or even mass-murdered. It is a critical line in the sand that must not be crossed, and not just because our Second Amendment says so, but because it is a violation of the inherit, human right to self preservation, and because the lessons of history show what happens to people who allow themselves to be disarmed. And the wholesale disarmament during Katrina shows that it can, indeed, happen again, right here in America. ...

Read it all here.