The short answer is that there is no real answer. Part of the reason for that is:

   (1) The patriot/militia movement by it's very nature attracts strong willed, independent thinking people. People who also are usually intelligent and are not lacking in the ego department. To say that among all these people there will be honest differences of opinion is an understatement. To say that "politics" and "infighting" are almost certain to arise is also to state what should be obvious.

   (2) You can also take it to the bank that the powers that be will try to exploit this sort of situation by planting carefully crafted pieces of disinformation for people to find and also by employing agents whose primary goal is to increase disagreements and infighting between and among the various members of the patriot community.

   Obviously this is a frustrating situation to deal with. This can be compounded by such factors as somebody who is normally a trustworthy source of information occasionally having a bad day, or simply a bad reaction to somebody else with a personality that rubs them the wrong way. It is also not beyond the realm of possibility that people could be co-opted by the powers that be through the course of time, or even have been a long term plant from the get go.

So, what is a person supposed to do about all this?

   I think that one of the better ways to deal with this was put forward by Bill Cooper (somebody who I occasionally have heartburn with). Basically, read as much stuff as you can get a hold of. See what everybody has to say. Believe only that which you can verify for yourself, and continually cross check your sources of information against each other. Bear in mind that you may be dealing with situations such that none of the people that you are chatting with may necessarily have a good handle on them.

   I have also noticed that the solutions that people propose for dealing with the problems that we face as a country will vary depending on a variety of factors. One of them is the length of time that they have either spent in the patriot movement or simply been "awake" and studying things. Depending on how much studying one has done, different answers will seem to provide the optimal way for solving things. One of the other variables is also how much military training/experience/knowledge of military history and or history in general the person has.

   Indeed, one of the marks of a "newbie" can be a desire to form large organizations to handle things in a centralized coordinated manner on the national level. Those who have been around awhile generally tend to take a more localized approach, or tend to try to approach things in a more low key manner. I have seen many people come into the patriot movement, try to take the weight of solving the entire country's problems onto their shoulders personally, and as a result burn out rather rapidly when not much seems to happen in a short time.

   So, study as much as you can. Cross check your sources of information as much as you can. Realize that there will be people out there who will have honest differences of opinion with you and might not think much of your argumentation. However, that in and of itself does not automatically mean that the person you are dealing with is some sort of plant or government agent. It is my opinion that the actual number of agents employed by the government is actually quite small, and that most of the time somebody accuses somebody else of being a plant it has more to do with disagreements about how to go about doing things than because somebody has found the check stubs that prove so and so has been getting paid by the feds. I believe that people within the patriot movement would be well served by refraining from accusing those who disagree with them of being government plants simply because they don't agree with their pet solution to the country's problems. Above all, have the humility to realize that you may be the one who is mistaken, and it is that obnoxious so and so that you disagree with who may be trying to tell you something that you vitally need to know.

Thus endeth the rant for today.
 

Last Revision: January 25, 1998