In the event of a complete economic collapse...

I will not be trusting any armed, paranoid, religious fundamentalists (of any stripe) to protect my rights.

Lest you think I am ungrateful, consider the track record of our would-be saviors:

• Organizing "open carry" events so that everyone could see them prancing about with their guns on their hips
• Cox showing up while police searched a house due to hang up 911 call, armed and wearing a vest, and walking in to the search area without informing the police he was carrying
• Domestic violence
• Convening a 'trial" at the local Denny's

Even for Fairbanks, where last week I sat in traffic behind a Subaru sporting an NRA sticker, this is pretty out there. 

Following the progress of the Schaeffer Cox trial has been fascinating in a "rubber-necking at the sheer nuttery of it all" kind of way. The ideology he and his followers have been spouting, while shocking, has a familiar ring to it, as one of my uncles used to spout similar nonsense years ago. I mean, this crap has been around for years, particularly amongst folks who don't like to pay taxes. More troubling is the link to some of the grandaddies of militant right-wing nuttery, Norm Olson for instance, formerly of the Michigan Militia. And lucky us, he now lives down on the Kenai Peninsula.

But while my uncle believed the U.S. Post Office to be unconstitutional, the IRS to be unconstitutional, and wanted the U.S. to get back on the gold standard, he was a gentle kind of crazy.  He didn't stockpile a bunch of weapons (although it was a point of disagreement on our part about whether anyone should be able to own an anti-aircraft gun.) Most of the family just kind of worked around the crazy, cutting off any political talk before it got burdensome for the non-sovereign citizen in the conversation. My aunt surreptiously worked out an arrangement with the postman to get mail delivered to their house.

Once, when I tried to pay him back for buying something we needed at the house, I made the mistake of referring to the amount owed as 50 dollars.  This prompted a lengthy bit of exposition on his part on how the cash I was offering was not, in fact, dollars.  The conversation did not end well. "Look, just please shut and take these green pieces of paper meant to represent the value of a dollar, already," I asked. He took the cash. 

Frankly, I doubt that a group of armed thugs in uniforms with the unintentionally Orwellian moniker of "Peacemakers", and hewing to a particularly rigid interpretation of Christianity, will take too kindly to my liberal, leftie, libertarianish gay self. I don't suspect their impromptu civil government will be very concerned with my rights, property or otherwise. I wonder, in the society they imagine, will they let people like myself who don't agree with them hold on to our guns?

I doubt it.