Posted by
John Crutchfield on Thursday, April 23, 2009 9:56:18 PM
On April 19th, 2009, a friend named Winston and I attended a rally for Oath Keepers in Lexington, MA. I was made aware of the organization through fellow TH blogger, Glenn Flowers and became interested in learning more. Since Lexington is only an hour from my house, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to observe and participate in an event exercising our rights under the First Amendment.
For those who may not know, Oath Keepers is a non-partisan group made up of active duty and retired military, police, fire and emergency personnel who have, at one time or another, been sworn into their respective service by taking the oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. Their website lists specific orders they will refuse to follow because they are deemed unconstitutional. You can check them out at:
www.masspla.org or
www.oath-keepers.blogspot.com/
Without prior experience in counting crowds, I would estimate the number in attendance to be somewhere around five hundred or so. The gathering was made up of families, groups, couples and individuals from various political backgrounds united in a common interest - to preserve our liberties protected by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Since nearly all were dressed in street clothes, it would be impossible to determine what percentage were AD military, police or fire, etc., or how many may have been packing. Let's just say I felt safe.
Some of the highlights of the event came from "Patriot Pastor" Garrett Lear, who opened with prayer in the name of Jesus. On several occasions he referred to the one true God reminding us that He is the author of our liberty. It was truly uplifting to hear the name of our Lord through loudspeakers in the town square. Liberals living within earshot were surely scurrying to crank the volume on their favorite PBS show in a frantic effort to avoid hearing the truth.
Lear gave a good history lesson as well, rendering an image of the events that took place there on the Lexington Battle Green on April 19, 1775. He told of how a small group of sixty Minutemen had gathered on the Green to meet the British Army six to eight hundred strong. The British commander ordered the patriots to lay down their arms. They refused. Capt. John Parker of the Lexington Militia said: "If they want to have war, let it begin here!" With that, a British officer gave the order to fire. In the end, eight patriots were shot to death for refusing to lay down their arms. Modern day patriots take heed. That's what this rally was all about. As much as anything, it was a message to a president not happy with your Second Amendment rights. Memo to Obama..."Don't Tread on Me".
Pastor Lear then went on to say that one of the saddest days of his life was when congressman Keith Ellison of MN, a Muslim, was sworn into office on a Koran once owned by Thomas Jefferson. In Jefferson's day, the country was in a war with Muslim pirates that terrorized merchant ships sailing the waters off the Barbary Coast. Jefferson obtained the Koran and read it in an effort to learn more about the enemy and how to defeat him. (DId I mention they were Muslims? Stop me if you've heard this before.) Lear told the crowd he'd also read the Koran - three times and said: "I can tell you without a shred of doubt, there is nothing about Sharia law that is compatible with the Constitution of the United States." Jefferson must be rolling in his grave.
At this point, I began looking around for men in black suits with ear pieces and sunglasses fearing the good reverend might be hauled off to The Hague to defend himself for hate crimes. As I warily scanned the sky listening for the chopping sound of black helicopters, a young man who appeared to be in his late thirties, saw me and said: "See that jet?" "Yes." we replied. (A jet plane was leaving a contrail at what must have been thirty thousand feet or so.) He told us: "Its good the contrail is dissipating. If you see one that doesn't dissipate and gets wider and wider, that's a chemtrail. Chemtrails are caused by toxic chemicals in the jet fuel and they've been spraying them on us for decades, slowly killing us." He offered no explanation as to who "they" are, but there was no need. Turning to me, Winston whispered: "It's grassy knoll kooks like him that give us a bad name." "Huh? Oh, right." I said.
By now, our backs were suffering the affects of standing in one place for two and a half hours and we decided to head home. I regret missing the end of the program when a former Navy Seal invited all those who had taken the oath to defend the Constitution to take it again, thus reaffirming their allegience. But, as Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, stated in his speech earlier, "the oath doesn't expire". Thank God someone is stepping up to remind us. I can't seem to locate the Seal's name, so if anyone can find it, please let us know so that he can receive proper credit. I'll bet TH blogger, Crawfish can shed some light on this and perhaps fill in the blanks in the next paragraph.
I also regret that we missed LCDR Guy Cunningham, who was scheduled to adress the gathering. Cunningham was the author of the 29 Palms survey given to a group of Marines in 1995. For those not familiar with the survey, the questionairre was designed to assess the attitudes of our military toward certain non-traditional missions. One statement they were asked to consider went as follows. "I would fire upon U.S. citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the United States government." Some of you TH bloggers know the results of this questionnaire and I invite you to comment here freely. Freely that is, until Obama decides to shut down the internet for "national security reasons". And don't put it past him. Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Nepolitano recently said the administration is looking into right wing extremist organizations that target former military personnel for recruitment. Nepolitano must believe that American citizens pose a greater risk to national security than terrorists on a Jihad. (I guess she would know. She's one of them.) As a friend pointed out, Oath Keepers must surely be one group Nepolitano was referring to, and who knows, maybe TH too. Too bad they won't expend as much energy on the real threats to our homeland. Oh well, at least we know they won't waterboard us for information now right?.....................Right?