Expand the Minuteman Project!

When I think of the Minuteman Project'the organization of Americans heroically stepping up to the plate, in the spirit of the American Revolutionaries from whom they inherit their namesake, standing on the Mexican border with shotguns and calling the federal government when they catch the migrating criminals crossing into the United States in pursuit of happiness, work and destruction of American values'my heart warms so much it burns and sends pangs of patriotic heat up my esophagus.

What could be more American'more in touch with the American Revolution'than helping the federal government enforce laws against the free travel from one country to another? If anything smacks of liberty and freedom, it is keeping these wretched refuse away from the Land of the Free, lest they come in and corrupt the apple-pie principles that make this country so special.

The Minuteman Project claims to be 'Americans doing the jobs our government won't do, operating within the law to support enforcement of the law.' Hear, hear! I do believe the only trouble with this movement is that it is limited to the mere protection of our sacrosanct (as in, State-created) borders.

What we must do, to regain our patriotic heritage as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, is expand and extend this approach to other areas of policy in which the government has proven unwilling and unable to adequately enforce the laws. Indeed, we are a country of laws'not of men. A nation of edicts and legislation'not of human beings. And the laws must be enforced, to the letter, or else we might as well resign ourselves to pure anarchy.

Let us begin by considering one area of insufficient enforcement: the War on Drugs. Why, oh why, cannot the government do its job in stamping out these demonic poisons? I modestly propose that we apply the Minuteman strategy to this epidemic. Thousands of us must take up arms and inform the State of any funny business we witness. Let us infiltrate the rock concerts, the frat parties, and the other stomping grounds of sin. Cell phones in hand, we can call the DEA and demand that they put a stop to the drug use that, as much as anything, is responsible for the downfall of civilization.

And we shouldn't stop there. No, no, no. For the government can only run smoothly if it is sufficiently funded'and what is a country without a sufficiently-funded, smoothly-running government? The government therefore needs plenty of tax revenue, but the IRS has done a terrible job at catching tax evaders. I'm not just talking about the big-shot CEOs. I'm talking about the waitresses and pizza deliverers who do not claim their tips on their 1040s, the reprobate teenagers who do not fess up when they earn money mowing neighbors' lawns, the babysitters who conceal the profits they make and refuse to give back their fair share to the government'that is, the society'which has allowed them to live, prosper and thrive.

Turn them all in! We need a Minuteman Project, millions of Americans strong, to assist the IRS at every turn in stopping these tax evaders. I am sure this would make the original Minutemen proud.

One bizarre irony in all this is that, while most of the men currently assisting the federal border police are undoubtedly as patriotic and American as the Lincoln Memorial itself, some among them are just as criminal as the detestable invading hordes of immigrants the movement seeks to repel. I would bet a good number of them, rugged individualists as they are, have refused to register all their firearms properly, and some might even be carrying weapons contrary to state and/or federal law.

For the Minuteman Project to succeed, these gun law'breaking criminals among its ranks must be purged. An additional Minuteman movement must come forward, willing to inform the ATF, FBI and Justice Department of every deviant they see violating any of our sacrosanct gun laws. For a nation without well-enforced gun laws has just as much in common with the America envisioned by the original Minutemen, as a nation without well-enforced borders.

When I think about the problems facing America, they all come down to a government not doing enough to enforce its many wonderful laws. Our freedom and dignity cannot survive another decade unless the government does its duty and fulfills its obligations and promises. The current Minuteman Project understands this, as its members reflect on what made the promise of the American Revolution so thrilling and beautiful. The colonists who threw off the yoke of the British Empire fought for life, liberty, property, well-enforced borders and a government that would carry out its laws mercilessly. The last thing they wanted was an inactive, impotent central government.

Let us expand the Minutemen Project throughout every sector of U.S. government policy. If our government is unwilling to do its job in keeping illegal immigrants away from this free country, stamping out drugs and arresting users, rounding up tax evaders without relent, and enforcing the 20,000 gun laws in America that make this the freest country on earth, we need patriots, in the spirit of the American Revolution, to force the politicians to crack down on lawbreakers. We need voluntary IRS helpers, FBI helpers, DEA helpers, and FDA helpers to complement the volunteer snitches for the border gestapo.

I'll be doing my little part by standing on the street corner and calling the police every time I see a jaywalker, or a motorist who doesn't signal when he turns.

What will you be doing any time soon to preserve the American Revolution and the American government (but I repeat myself)?

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Anthony Gregory's picture
Columns on STR: 37

Anthony Gregory is a Research Analyst at The Independent Institute, a Policy Advisor at the Future of Freedom Foundation, and a columnist at LewRockwell.com. His website is AnthonyGregory.com.