New American revolutionaries march to a very different beat

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 19, 1996 | by Ralph R. Reiland

I met Don Smith, the elected chaplain of the Citizens Militia of Greene County, southwest of Pittsburgh, at a recent dinner meeting of the local Libertarian Party at Del's Restaurant in the city.

Given the Libertarian focus on individual freedom and limited government, it wasn't surprising to see Smith as the guest speaker. lb a Libertarian, it isn't the government's business if you're a zillionaire or gay or smoke nonfilter Camels--or if you drive a tank--as long as you don't hurt anyone.

"Our republic is based on three boxes," Smith was saying when I came in. "The soapbox, the ballot box and the jury box. If the first three fail, then it's time for the fourth--the cartridge box."

"That's a big step," whispered the woman across the table from me, between bites of her eggplant parmigiana. "When are you certain that the first three have failed?"

Good question. For the Founding Fathers, King George crossed the line with some relatively small taxes and regulations. "George III took an average of 5 percent of family income at the time of the American Revolution," says Smith. "Now we're closer to 45 percent." Today, to meet the costs of taxes and government regulations, according to a recent study by the Americans for Tax Reform, the average American works until July 10.

For Smith, a second American Revolution isn't such a bizarre idea. "I'm amazed it didn't start during Waco or Ruby Ridge," he says. We're heading for trouble, Smith believes, not because of talk radio, Pat Buchanan or guns but because of citizens' passivity and their aversion to seriously challenging government abuses.

"I have a degree in psychology," Smith explains. "I do a lot of people watching. None of us want violence, but what causes violence is the reluctance to confront it. It's like the schoolyard bully. He starts with only words.

If you let him get away with it, it only gets worse. The bully will get nastier until he believes you're fed up. Then he'll stop. Almost invariably, the bully backs down."

"The King of Great Britain ' says the Declaration of Independence, "has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance." Today, to set up a lemonade stand in Boston, a kid must get permission from five different government agencies and pay $335 in fees and licenses. The city also requires the budding entrepreneur to comply with dozens of building ordinances and carry $500,000 in liability insurance.

At the meeting, Smith distributed the words from America's colonial malcontents. "A wise and frugal government," stated Thomas Jefferson, "which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuit of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." Sounds like someone who would take a risk on homemade lemonade.

In Greene County, Smith says farmers drive around with 400-gallon containers on the back of their pickup trucks to haul water for their livestock. New environmental rules forbid farmers from letting their cows drink from the streams on their own property. "The regulators say the cow's feet might muddy up the creek," Smith explains.

"Who are these people," President Clinton recently asked, "who say they love their country but hate their government?" They are, of course, not unlike the antiwar protectors that Clinton knew in the sixties. The anger then was about Vietnam; today, it's about overblown government, taxes and regulations.

A Times-Mirror poll reports 69 percent of. Americans say government "controls too much of our daily lives." In a Gallup-CNN-USA Today survey, 40 percent of Americans say that "the federal government is so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens."

"The Lord's Prayer is 66 words," says policy analyst Thomas D. Hopkins, "while government regulations on the sale of cabbages total 26,911 words." In California, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing ordered newspaper editors to remove the politically incorrect descriptions "family room" and "master bedroom" and "nice neighborhood" from realestate ads. In Los Angeles, the Odd Ball Cabaret, a strip joint, was closed by a city agency under the Americans with Disabilities Act because its shower stalls on stage weren't accessible to strippers in wheelchairs. It didn't matter that no handicapped strippers had applied for work.

For many, the rising mistrust of government takes an ominous turn when the grumblers are armed. Militia members make the opposite case. The real danger, they say, isn't with gun ownership but with government confiscation of guns--rendering citizens defenceless against state tyranny One could argue that this view is as American as apple pie: "What country," asked Jefferson, "can preserve its liberty if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance?" To "disarm the people," proclaimed George Mason, a principal composer of the Bill of Rights, is "the best and most effective way to enslave them."