299 Days: The 43 Colonels

by Glen Tate

  “I think everyone would agree that a religion should help people with the things they encounter in life, right? A religion should explain why people live and how they can live better. It should have teachings on the big things people experience like marriage, children, and death. Christianity certainly does.”

  “Or does it?” he asked. “Sure, those topics and dozens more are addressed in the Bible. But modern American churches, at least before the Collapse, ignored several important topics.”

  “As the government became more and more oppressive leading up to the Collapse, people were confronted with big problems. Was it moral to not pay the new taxes if a person could not afford them? Was it moral to disobey unjust laws, like laws allowing the government to seize property, search homes without a warrant, and take away guns?”

  “All these were real problems facing people, but almost all churches refused to address these topics. They said, ‘Render unto Caesar’ and ‘God doesn’t get involved in politics.’ Really? There are numerous passages of the Bible instructing us to obey God and not unjust earthly laws. By the way, tell Martin Luther King, Jr., the hero of the liberal left, that people must obey all earthly laws, even if they are unjust. He was the first to say that a Christian is not required to follow unjust laws.”

  “The thing that most scared the authorities about my message, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, and the Black Robe pastors in the first American Revolutionary War, was that God wants us to be free! God loves liberty. He loves decent people living under just a handful of basic laws. He hates bullies. He hates government bullies, who take from some and give to others. When people realize God hates tyranny and loves liberty—and that the enemy is working by, through, and for, unjust government—they will fight tyranny, not just for earthly reasons, but to serve God. This is what the authorities fear: Patriots with religious motivation to fight. This is their worst nightmare.”

  “So, to make sure Patriots didn't have a religious framework, the enemy tried to use the churches to make us think churches shouldn’t get involved in ‘politics.’ I looked at churches and religious leaders before the Collapse and kept asking myself why they weren’t confronting the real issues facing people. I came to two conclusions, one tolerable and one inexcusable. The tolerable answer was that in the past, right up until a few decades ago, we weren’t confronted with nearly as many unjust laws so we didn’t have to decide whether or not to obey them. The second and inexcusable reason is that most churches were scared of offending the government. They used their tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status as an excuse not to get involved in ‘politics.’ What a cop-out. Churches are inherently exempt from taxation and even Section 508 of the tax code recognizes this, but that is a discussion we don’t have time for today. The mainstream pre-Collapse 501(c)(3) churches really thought that allowing parishioners to donate and to take the donations off their taxes was more important than speaking the truth. This shows that many churches were more concerned about the offering plate than they were about the truth.”

  “There is actually a third reason why these churches avoided the real issues of the day—the liberty issues—and that’s the enemy I mentioned earlier. This is a government event today so I will not give a religious sermon on the enemy, but I feel compelled to note that as a reason, in my opinion.”

  “This idea that the government would mute the churches is not some conspiracy theory. We know that FEMA actively worked with churches before and during the Collapse. FEMA’s message with their ‘partner’ churches-how can a church ‘partner’ with something as corrupt as a government—was to, you guessed it, ‘render unto Caesar’ and obey the earthly laws. Somehow, the FEMA churches told their parishioners that obeying the government was obeying God. Think about that. Government is God, they’re saying. Given all we know about how the Limas acted, how can anyone say that obeying them is good? Obeying corrupt government is the opposite of obeying God. This is why the enemy got himself into the churches. And by ‘enemy’ I mean both the spiritual enemy and the Limas. Both enemies; they work together.”

  “So I started a church here in the former Washington State. We did not apply for 501(c)(3) status and were not afraid. We tackled the problems actually confronting people in pre-Collapse America. We used this wonderful gift God gave us: the internet. People who couldn’t physically attend church in my small building could listen from almost anywhere in the world. The number of people listening grew astronomically. I was providing something people couldn’t get anywhere else: a church that stood for something and addressed the problems they were facing. A church that was unafraid.”

  “By now, the authorities were noticing me. Our software showed lots of downloads of my sermons in Washington, D.C., at the ISP addresses of the Department of Homeland Security. They weren’t hiding the fact that they were listening. In fact, I think they wanted us to know they were. If they intended to scare us, it was having the opposite effect.”

  “Pretty soon, we had grown into a much larger problem for both of the enemies. We started to have people attending our physical church and making comments online who spewed racist nonsense. It was pretty obvious what our enemies were doing. We rooted out the racist things. We knew the next line of attack our enemies would take.”

  “Sure enough,” Shahram said, “the notice of a tax audit arrived in the mail. They wanted to know why a tax-exempt entity was engaged in ‘politics.’ I had a simple answer: we’re not a tax-exempt entity. We did not get 501(c)(3) status because we didn’t need it. They made the ridiculous assertion that we were tax-exempt, but we weren’t. Think about that: the IRS was insisting someone was tax exempt, but the taxpayer was screaming, ‘No, we’re not. Tax us, please.’ That’s how insane this was.”

  “After finally convincing them that we were not tax-exempt, they said we were a for-profit entity that didn’t report our ‘profits.’ I can assure you from a quick inspection of my family’s tiny apartment and our beater car that there is no ‘profit’ in this. But they sent us a massive tax bill.”

  “I think God delights in taking the actions of the enemy and then turning them against the enemy and thereby showing everyone that He is charge. News of the tax bill caused a huge spike in donations. We more than paid the tax bill and even had plenty of money left over to increase our internet presence. We even expanded our physical church and had to have several services on Sundays, and then Wednesdays to accommodate all our new parishioners. Thank you, IRS.”

  “Seeing all the parallels between what was happening in America and the first Revolutionary War, I started studying the Black Robe Regiments that Governor Trenton mentioned earlier. I found my calling. I would form the Black Robe Regiments here in Washington State.”

  “My sermons and historical discussions on the Internet started to talk about the Black Robe Regiments and that was when volunteers came streaming in. Pretty soon, we had Black Robe pastors in cities and towns all over Washington and other states. I kept a map in my little office with pins on every city where we had a Black Robe pastor. I would look at that map and smile with pride at what God was doing through me.”

  Shahram smiled, “Well, it appeared that Homeland Security had a similar map in their big offices. Just like the British in the first Revolutionary War, they knew what a threat Patriots were when they had a religious framework for their opposition to tyranny.”

  “They tried a two-phase approach to stop us. First, they gave ‘off the record’ briefings to the media about my ‘insurrectionist, fundamentalist, racist’ church. The media obediently ran the stories and, magically overnight, protestors were being bused in to march around and rant outside our physical church. Our internet site was experiencing thousands of hacking attempts a day. We had several computer experts in our church who devoted hundreds of hours of their time to keep our website up. Sometimes the hacking succeeded.”

  “We knew a second tax audit was coming. We had so many new members and contributions, we knew they would try the same thing, but this tim
e apply their bizarre accounting to a larger pot of money. Sure enough. But this time, they didn’t just give us a big tax bill that they knew we’d raise more than enough additional money to pay. They got a court order to shut us down. They called us a ‘continuing criminal enterprise.’ That was a phrase they used on lots of us in this room.”

  “Now I had a personal choice to make. I preached over and over that a Christian serves God by defying unjust laws from corrupt governments. ‘Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God,’ I would say. That, by the way, is a quote from Thomas Jefferson and sums up my ministry. I was served with a court order that said I would be violating the law if I continued to preach. Think about that. In a country that supposedly had freedom of religion, the government was telling a member of the clergy that he would go to jail for preaching. I felt like I was in Iran all over again.”

  “I knew this was a big test from the enemy. Would I cave in and show all my parishioners that I was all talk, but when it came to me putting myself at risk, I wouldn’t do what I preached?”

  Shahram smiled and raised his hands up. “Are you kidding me? This was game time! This is what I lived to do.”

  “We had a plan for this, of course and we executed that plan. My family and I were actually under surveillance. Can you believe that? With the help of several parishioners who were former intelligence agency people, we slipped the surveillance and went to our secret, pre-arranged location.”

  “Where we broadcasted continuously! We had short-term internet connections, did a quick show, sent the content to a secure server, and then abandoned that ISP address. The servers got the message out through a series of things I don’t fully understand, but our computer people did.”

  “I would go on Radio Free Redoubt and we’d broadcast from fields, small safe houses, and even a mountaintop once. Everyone helping me, from the computer people to John Jacob Schmidt, was ‘aiding and abetting a terrorist.’ I was never charged with anything and certainly never had a trial; can you imagine what a jury of twelve people would do when I mentioned freedom of religion? It only takes one juror to agree with me and I would be acquitted, which is why they didn’t want to use the regular court system and juries. I was found to be an ‘enemy combatant’ under the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA as we all call it. The handy thing about the NDAA is that some official just declared me to be an ‘enemy combatant’; that’s it. No trial, no jury, no due process.”

  Shahram smiled and threw his arms up again in joy. “How funny is that? ‘Enemy combatant!’ Yes, guilty as charged: I was combating the enemy. The spiritual one. And I’m proud of that!”

  “Well, fighting the enemy and the most powerful nation on earth at the same time isn’t easy. I needed to rely on an ever-increasing circle of people providing me safe houses and communications. One of them made a mistake. I don’t blame him. It was an easy mistake to make. As I was broadcasting in a safe house in eastern Washington, there was an explosion and storm troopers came flying in from every door. I was handcuffed before I knew what happened.”

  “Off I went to an earthly jail, with a smile on my face. That’s what made the agents the most mad. The smile. Just like this,” he said and gave his big, broad grinning smile showing how joyous he was.

  “I’m going to be honest; prison was horrible. The conditions were awful.” He shrugged. “But Christians like me have endured much worse. It wasn’t being burned at the stake.”

  “I was transferred to an unknown prison and one night I was awakened by the sounds of explosions, yelling, and then some gunfire. I was lucky enough to be in the Tacoma prison when the amazing Patriot special operations soldiers rescued us.” He motioned to the soldiers in uniform and then waved his hands to the crowd to stand up. The audience gave the soldiers a standing ovation.

  “God always provides a way, and in this case, it was some very tough and well-armed special operations soldiers doing some very violent things.” He couldn’t resist making a point. “Oh, and to those in the mainstream churches who say that we should never use violence, I say this: if the government hadn't used violence first by arresting a pastor for giving sermons, then the violence of the prison raid wouldn’t have been necessary. So, yes, let’s not use violence against Patriots in the first place.” The audience applauded loudly.

  “By the way, we know, from intelligence documents that the Limas were about to drug me in prison and get me to say racist things on video and then broadcast them. Just like the other enemy I mentioned, the Limas need lies to accomplish what they want. The truth is their enemy.”

  “One of the things I’m most proud of—in the sense that God used me to accomplish —things—is the Black Robe organization we created. The Black Robe pastors and their congregations often formed the nucleus of the Patriot underground in cities and rural areas. Others joined, of course; it wasn’t just Black Robe pastors and parishioners.

  “I am very proud that Black Robe pastors often served as chaplains for the local guerilla units. In fact, I talked to Lt. Col. Hammond earlier today and he confirmed that several of the irregular units he fielded had Black Robe chaplains. They picked up a rifle and a Bible and went out to resist tyranny. Because that is obedience to God.”

  Chapter 359

  Col. Mick Burke

  (The Wish List Guy)

  “We go from the spiritual to the very concrete and earthly topic of logistics,” Ben said after the applause for Col. Hadian died down. “Oh, but don’t worry. This isn’t the boring kind of logistics. You’ll love this.”

  “Col. Mick Burke was a ‘double whammy.’ He not only got supplies to our side, he prevented supplies from going to the other side. He was in the right place at the right time, and put himself at risk to do the right thing.”

  “I’ll let him tell his story. Please welcome Col. Mick Burke.”

  A man in his forties reluctantly stood and nervously walked to the rostrum. He looked like the co-worker in the next cubicle who was polite but always quiet and reserved.

  He seemed to relax a bit once he got close to the rostrum, like he had shaken off his nervousness. The crowd was applauding and then he cleared his throat softly.

  “Hello,” he said and looked at his index card. “Did you ever wonder how a FedEx package gets to your house?” The crowd quieted down. This would either be interesting or boring.

  “I was a kid when FedEx and UPS started delivering packages. I would ask the drivers how they tracked the packages, where they came from, how they got into the trucks, and how they could do all this overnight. Most of the drivers just shrugged.”

  “I read all I could on the topic and worked one summer at a FedEx regional shipping center in high school. I was fascinated at how something so complex as a package going from one place, and being transferred several times en route, could end up at the correct place almost every time 3,000 miles away and all of this overnight. And for a cost that was very reasonable. I hope I’m not ‘geeking out’ on you, but this is amazing when you think about it.”

  “I worked at FedEx in college and got a business degree in logistics. FedEx hired me at the big Seattle facility and soon I was a systems analyst who monitored and refined the system of delivering millions of packages every day.” He was loosening up and feeling much more comfortable as he spoke.

  “I noticed businesses and government agencies increasingly used FedEx and other carriers for routine inventory. ‘Just-in-time inventory’ we called it. It was actually cheaper for many businesses to order a small batch of inventory every day or a few times a week—and pay shipping to get them from thousands of miles away, or from China in many cases—than it was to buy in bulk and store it. This, too, fascinated me. How could this work? Why was it that businesses were having small amounts of product flown or taken on ships from, say, China every few days? This seemed fragile.”

  “Most people can’t appreciate how fragile the logistics system is until they know all its details. One snowstorm in Denver can force massive re-ro
utings. We have plans in place for this and make these adjustments on a daily basis. That’s why you never notice because that package you ordered just magically appears on your doorstep the next day. Many people assume this is normal, that packages just appear from thousands of miles away with no effort. They are wrong.”

  He could sense the audience was getting bored by all these details about logistics, so he said, “Trust me, you need to know these things to understand why I’m being awarded a colonelship.” He continued.

  “It takes computers, lots and lots of computers. It also takes planes, ships, and many trucks, but the part I want to focus on is the computers. Computers calculate the shortest distances, which is relatively easy. But they also factor in driving and flying times based on information they are constantly receiving. They keep track of where every package is, which then goes into the calculations of the fastest routes. These computers are so complex that no single human being can oversee them. That’s where I come in. More on that in a moment.”

  “I became alarmed at how a series of small glitches could prevent all the things Americans need from arriving when we need them. From the few complaints we got, I knew that if we didn’t have a work-around for that snowstorm in Denver, stores all over the country could run out of product and have to turn away customers. Website vendors without product, even for a day or two, had to put up the hated ‘Out of Stock’ label on their product, which meant that buyers instantly went elsewhere.”

  “This was just for consumer goods. The stakes were higher for a hospital that needed a specialized drug or a part for an MRI machine. I was stunned that government agencies, including national security ones, got a lot of their supplies from just-in-time inventory.”

  “Part of my job was planning for disasters. I would sit in meetings and run computer simulations of what would happen if a solar flare disrupted electricity in, say, New Brunswick, while at the same time hurricane warning clogged the freeways in Miami. It only took two or three of these events at the same time to make the map on the screen of our simulations blink in red, signifying massive delivery failures.”