There is a reason that Washington is intent on expanding “gun control,” which is simply a code word for gun confiscation. The United States is a very large territory, but if citizens are completely disarmed, it will be much easier for Washington to manage the public and keep them from pushing back.
However, there is a large and gathering group of constitutionalists, including many sheriffs groups, who recognize the efforts from Washington has been to diminish or remove our constitutional rights and freedoms. They are making known the fact that they are not part of that movement and that they intend to abide by the constitution and exercise their responsibilities without federal direction or intervention. By and large, one would expect these sheriffs to be Trump supporters.
Colorado sheriffs flank Weld County, Colorado, Sheriff John Cooke in 2013 as he announces that 54 Colorado sheriffs had filed a federal lawsuit challenging two gun control bills passed by the Colorado Legislature.
Now, a single event like Recapture, the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff or the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation, broadcast globally and instantly via social media, draws supporters from across the extreme right, from other Sagebrush Rebels to pro-gun militiamen to local politicians who have no qualms about standing cheek-by-jowl with people aiming rifles at federal agents.
Among those officials are a growing cadre of county sheriffs, many of them from the rural West, who believe themselves above the reach of federal government, constitutionally empowered as the supreme law of the land. Some have chosen to become part of this movement, while others have joined unwittingly, by taking strong political stances or acting on the behalf of local anti-government movements. These self-proclaimed “constitutional sheriffs” use their assumed position as the ultimate law enforcement authority to fight environmental regulation, run federal officials out of their counties, and, in some cases, break the law themselves.
The constitutional sheriffs’ seminal moment was in 1994, when Richard Mack, then-sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, and a handful of other sheriffs sued the federal government over a provision in the 1993 Brady Act that required local law enforcement to handle background checks on gun sales. In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 for the sheriffs, deeming it unconstitutional for the feds to force the state or its officers to execute the regulation.
Mack’s defiance made him a folk hero to the then-burgeoning Patriot movement, which is centered around the belief that the federal government is taking away individual liberties. Mack became a speaker at Patriot gatherings, railing at Clinton and his attorney general, Janet Reno. In 1996, Mack lost his bid for re-election, but he still spoke for libertarian causes, and he co-wrote a book with Randy Weaver, the man at the center of the 1992 Ruby Ridge shootout with federal agents, the event that catalyzed the militia movement.
But it was Mack’s “complete discouragement and feelings of hopelessness” at the 2008 election of Barack Obama that propelled him back into the political spotlight. In reaction, Mack wrote a 50-page screed denouncing the federal government and its intrusion into individual and state rights. The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope, published in 2009, argues that the sheriff is the ultimate law enforcement authority and thus the “last line of defense” shielding individual liberties from out-of-control federal bureaucrats. The manifesto cemented his cause and made him one of the prime movers of the ad hoc reactionary movement that would come to be known as the Tea Party.
By refusing to enforce federal and state laws that they deem unconstitutional, whether they involve BLM, road closures, gun control, drug laws or bans against selling unpasteurized milk, Mack says sheriffs can lead the fight to rescue America from the “cesspool of corruption” that Washington, D.C., has become. If need be, he says, sheriffs even have the power to prevent federal and state agents from enforcing those laws, thereby nullifying federal authority. If a particular sheriff doesn’t rally to the cause, then the voters should kick him out of office. And Mack and his organization have been quietly fielding opposition candidates in many counties. In fact, he is one of the forces behind the Constitutional County Project, which aims, this year, to elect a whole slate of “constitutional” candidates to office in Navajo County, Arizona, in what amounts to a nonviolent coup d’état. “There is no solution in Washington, D.C.,” Mack told me. “If we’re going to take America back it’s going to be at the local level.”
“We’re challenging the status quo, and we are challenging some federal and state agencies and some special interest groups who are using money, influence, politics, regulations and lies to literally destroy rural America and our way of life,” Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey, said, summing up the sentiments of his colleagues. “Some of your federal and state agencies care more about fish, frogs, trees and birds than (they) do about the human race. And one more thing: We’re broke. Why don’t you let the people work?” His message was clear: Environmental regulations wreck the economy, and a bad economy leads to crime, so the interests of sheriffs everywhere are best served by fighting environmental regulations.
State legislatures, including those in Montana, Arizona and Washington, have tried to pass legislation giving sheriffs more power, usually by undercutting federal law enforcement. They’re rarely successful, but in 2013, Eldredge attended the Utah Legislature’s session to help Rep. Mike Noel, a well-known Sagebrush Rebel from Kane County, introduce a bill to limit the ability of federal officials to enforce state and local laws on public lands in the state. The “sheriff’s bill” passed, but was later repealed after the courts stopped it from taking effect.
Which isn’t to say sheriffs aren’t already extremely powerful, says LaFrance. As elected officials, sheriffs are accountable only to the voters. County commissioners have no control over them and can’t remove a sheriff, even if he or she is convicted of a crime. Though commissioners typically control the budget, they are usually prohibited from cutting off the sheriff altogether. In most states, only the governor can remove a sheriff from office, and that is only in cases of extreme malfeasance.
Sheriffs have used their authority to weigh in on all manner of issues. Mack was a leading figure at the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014, excoriating the local sheriff for not running the BLM out of there, and last year, he urged constitutional sheriffs to refuse to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision to permit gay marriage. In Idaho, Bonner County Sheriff Daryl Wheeler wrote to the state’s governor, Butch Otter, exhorting him not to resettle Syrian refugees. Mack was on hand in Burns, Oregon, in early January to demonstrate in support of ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were sentenced to five years in prison for arson on federal land. Even though he is close to the Bundys, however, Mack questioned their subsequent occupation of the nearby wildlife refuge. While the local Harney County Sheriff, David Ward, has taken a strong stance against the occupation, Sheriff Glenn Palmer, from Grant County, Oregon expressed limited support for Bundy and friends, saying the federal government should give in to some of their demands. Palmer was the 2011 CSPOA Sheriff of the Year, and made his name by pushing back against federal land agency travel-management plans.
Mack says the CSPOA has about 4,500 dues-paying members, some 200 of whom are sheriffs, and he says his group has “trained” (taught their principles to) hundreds more. But the tentacles of the constitutional sheriff philosophy clearly reach far beyond the group’s membership rolls. Shortly after the Recapture ride, the conservative media outlet Breitbart Texas interviewed Eldredge, who in 2010 had run as a Democrat against then-incumbent Mike Lacy, promising to open more doors to federal agencies. Four years later, he was a Republican, running on a record of standing against federal overreach. In the interview, the sheriff blamed environmental regulations for transforming San Juan County from one of the richest counties to one of the poorest in the state, and he said he’d love to see federal land transferred to the state. When asked if he considered himself a constitutional sheriff, Eldredge replied, “I do.
“I thought every sheriff was supposed to be a constitutional sheriff,” he added. “That’s our job.
Notable Quotations:
“Every civil government is based upon some religion or philosophy of life. Education in a nation will propagate the religion of that nation. In America, the foundational religion was Christianity. And it was sown in the hearts of Americans through the home and private and public schools for centuries. Our liberty, growth, and prosperity was the result of a Biblical philosophy of life. Our continued freedom and success is dependent on our educating the youth of America in the principles of Christianity.”
– Noah Webster
“The heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.”
– Noah Webster
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.”
– Noah Webster
“The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.”
– Noah Webster
“In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed. … No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people. ”
– Noah Webster
“Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.”
– Noah Webster
“The reasonableness of the command to obey parents is clear to children, even when quite young. ”
– Noah Webster
“A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason. ”
– Noah Webster
“Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.”
– Noah Webster
“The education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. [I]t is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system … than to correct by penal statutes the ill effects of a bad system. … The education of youth … lays the foundations on which both law and gospel rest for success.”
– Noah Webster
“The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal [secular] concerns of men.”
Noah Webster
“No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people… When I speak of the Christian religion as the basis of government… I mean the primitive Christianity in its simplicity as taught by Christ and His apostles, consisting of a belief in the being, perfections, and government of God; in the revelation of His will to men, as their supreme rule of action; in man’s… accountability to God for his conduct in this life; and in the indispensable obligation of all men to yield entire obedience to God’s commands in the moral law and the Gospel.”
– Noah Webster
“The foundation of all free government and all social order must be laid in families and in the discipline of youth. Young persons must not only be furnished with knowledge, but they must be accustomed to subordination and subjected to the authority and influence of good principles. It will avail little that youths are made to understand truth and correct principles, unless they are accustomed to submit to be governed by them… And any system of education… which limits instruction to the arts and sciences, and rejects the aids of religion in forming the character of citizens, is essentially defective.”
– Noah Webster
“He only can be esteemed really and permanently happy, who enjoys peace of mind in the favor of God.”
– Noah Webster
This is they’re plan for America, plain and simple. This is not about he said she said, these criminals (Liberals) are intent on ending our country and the world, period and they are two thirds of the way there already, Hillary would be the last nail in our coffin!!! Please read it, copy and share.
AMERICA WANTS TRUMP….Make America Great Again.
Notable Quotations:
“Every civil government is based upon some religion or philosophy of life. Education in a nation will propagate the religion of that nation. In America, the foundational religion was Christianity. And it was sown in the hearts of Americans through the home and private and public schools for centuries. Our liberty, growth, and prosperity was the result of a Biblical philosophy of life. Our continued freedom and success is dependent on our educating the youth of America in the principles of Christianity.”
– Noah Webster
“The heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.”
– Noah Webster
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.”
– Noah Webster
“The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.”
– Noah Webster
“In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed. … No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people. ”
– Noah Webster
“Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.”
– Noah Webster
“The reasonableness of the command to obey parents is clear to children, even when quite young. ”
– Noah Webster
“A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason. ”
– Noah Webster
“Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.”
– Noah Webster
“The education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. [I]t is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system … than to correct by penal statutes the ill effects of a bad system. … The education of youth … lays the foundations on which both law and gospel rest for success.”
– Noah Webster
“The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal [secular] concerns of men.”
Noah Webster
“No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people… When I speak of the Christian religion as the basis of government… I mean the primitive Christianity in its simplicity as taught by Christ and His apostles, consisting of a belief in the being, perfections, and government of God; in the revelation of His will to men, as their supreme rule of action; in man’s… accountability to God for his conduct in this life; and in the indispensable obligation of all men to yield entire obedience to God’s commands in the moral law and the Gospel.”
– Noah Webster
“The foundation of all free government and all social order must be laid in families and in the discipline of youth. Young persons must not only be furnished with knowledge, but they must be accustomed to subordination and subjected to the authority and influence of good principles. It will avail little that youths are made to understand truth and correct principles, unless they are accustomed to submit to be governed by them… And any system of education… which limits instruction to the arts and sciences, and rejects the aids of religion in forming the character of citizens, is essentially defective.”
– Noah Webster
“He only can be esteemed really and permanently happy, who enjoys peace of mind in the favor of God.”
– Noah Webster
This is they’re plan for America, plain and simple. This is not about he said she said, these criminals (Liberals) are intent on ending our country and the world, period and they are two thirds of the way there already, Hillary would be the last nail in our coffin!!! Please read it, copy and share.
Keep the ads out of the way where you can read the story.