Word: patriotism
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Before the bombing in Oklahoma City, few Americans would have thought that either Miller or her show posed a serious threat to the civic order. Unlike many other American citizens who identify themselves as "patriots" -- an amorphous, far-right populist movement of both armed militias and unarmed groups that harbor a deep distrust of government -- Miller does not spend her weekends running around in camouflage, shooting at imagined enemies. Nor does she buy into every conspiracy theory that crackles along the patriot grapevine, like last week's alert that the Oklahoma catastrophe-which "patriots" suspect involved three bombs...
...tendencies herself, but because she is one of the disseminators of a virulent antigovernment philosophy that may have helped plant thoughts of insurrection in someone else's head. Miller's own first thought upon hearing of the bombing was, "Oh, my gosh, I hope some idiot calling himself a patriot didn't do this." She admits that her own unarmed group, the Sons of Liberty, had attracted a "loose cannon," a young man who tried to join last summer. "He was saying things like, 'We ought to blow up the federal building,' "she recalls. The Sons of Liberty promptly tossed...
...count just the people who are arming themselves against the day when U.N. tanks roll through the heartland to establish the one-world order, estimates range only as high as 100,000. But if you include all the people in as many as 40 states who respond to the patriot rhetoric about a sinister, out-of-control federal bureaucracy -- all the ranchers fed up with land- and water-use policies, all the loggers who feel besieged by environmentalists, all the underemployed who blame their plight on NAFTA and GATT -- then the count soars upwards of 12 million. "People are drawn...
...seems to be the one altar where moderate Constitutionalists and armed zealots can worship comfortably side by side. "There's a real fear that once the Second Amendment is abridged, the First [guaranteeing free speech] will be the next to go," says Scott Wheeler, a writer for the U.S. Patriot Network. Despite the reverence for guns, however, "the vast majority of people in the militias are not violent or dangerous," says James Aho, a sociologist at Idaho State University who has interviewed 368 members of the radical right...
Congress recently extended the Patriot Act. What do you make of that?We've crossed into this era where surveillance and surveillance capabilities in the government are just a reality, and I don't think you're going to see Congress taking away that authority. They'll try and tighten up the controls and the oversight. But you don't hear anybody seriously - or at least not any of the influential members of Congress - saying, Yeah, we need to get rid of the Patriot Act altogether and go back to the way it was before Sept. 11. That...