Stewart Rhodes Speech Lexington Green April 19 2009

Stewart’s Speech at Lexington Green April 19, 2009

<Transcription by Cindy Sullivan, Georgia Oath Keepers>

Good Afternoon

Hoorah!

I’m Stewart Rhodes. I’m the founder of Oath Keepers. I served as a paratrooper in the US Army

<applause>

Boy you’re an easy crowd, I’ll tell ya!

…and after my service… I served like the rest of you served. I didn’t do it for a job. I did it because I felt an obligation to serve my country.

But I’ll make a long story short. After that, I went to college, worked in Congressman Ron Paul’s office, and now if you’ll forgive me, I’ll let you know that I went to Yale Law School. I hope you don’t hold that against me.

But I’ll tell you something about Yale Law School. One thing people say is that during the presidency of George Bush, there was probably more respect for the constitution at Yale than at any other time in its history.

And I won an award for the best paper on the Bill of Rights, because I was outspoken in criticizing what I saw unconstitutional and very dangerous expansions of executive power from the Bush administration.

And that’s one thing that I always make very very clear, is that Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of current serving military, current serving police officers, veterans, and firefighters and other emergency personnel.

And when we say non-partisan, we mean it.

I don’t care whether they are democrat or republican. If they violate their oath, which they all took to support and defend the constitution, I will call them on it and you should too.

Now I want to ask a question here. First of all, everyone here who has taken an oath to support and defend the constitution, please stand up and raise your right hand in the air. Put your right hand if you swore an oath.

Now, if your oath expired, please put your hand down.

Did your oath expire?

<crowd- NO!>

It did not. There’s no expiration date on that oath, it is for life.

Okay put your hand back down for a minute there.

Now, I do have some bad news for you folks, though. Being an attorney, I did some research last night and it turns out that you don’t have a right to disobey unlawful orders. You do not have a right to do that. You have a duty, a duty to disobey unlawful orders.

It’s a duty.

And when you swore that oath, however long ago it’s been, whether it’s been five years, two months, twenty years, whatever it was. When you swore that oath, that is where you lost the option to not stand. You lost the option to duck out and hide or be afraid to speak out.

Whatever comes, you lost that option then, that’s where your choice was made.

Now, all you have left to do is your duty!

Is that right?

<crowd – Yeah!>

That’s right.

Now, I want to say a couple things. We stress at Oath Keepers, military, current serving and law enforcement for a reason, because we know that if a day should come in this country when a full blown dictatorship would come, or tyranny – from the left or from the right – we know that it can only happen if those men, our brothers in arms, go along and comply with unconstitutional and unlawful orders. That’s why we focus on them. And our mission is very simple. It’s to reach out to everyone who’s taken an oath, to remind them of their oath, and what they swore an oath to defend, and then to steel their resolve, and buck them up to do what’s right, and to keep their oath.

Now why, why is the oath to the constitution?

As you’ve already heard from the learned scholar Dr. Edwin Vieira, the constitutional republic that the constitution put in place is meant to protect your natural rights. Rights that predate any government.

Where do your rights come from? Do they come from government?

<crowd – NO!>

No they do not.

When the men stood here on April 19^th, 1775, there was no Second Amendment, nor was there a first, nor third, fourth or fifth or any of the rest of them.

They understood that they had natural rights and even though the British courts had upheld and sustained every abuse of their rights, that they had asserted over fifteen years of demonstrating, remonstrating, sending petitions, filing court cases – every time the British courts rubber stamped what was done by the King or by parliament.

Did they accept that as the final decision?

<crowd – NO!>

That was not, that was not the end of the argument…and the continuation of the argument was right here on this green.

They fought back, but not just because the regulars were attempting to disarm them. They fought back in defense of all their other natural rights, and all the procedural protections that Englishmen had fought and died for to give them the ability to preserve those natural rights.

Correct?

<crowd – RIGHT!>

That’s right. Just as we here today benefit from their sacrifice and their struggle, they learned the lessons of their….hard lessons they learned are enshrined in our Bill of Rights which are meant to protect and secure our natural rights…

<lost audio at 7:03 through 7:08 – shot of Whittmore monument>

…..out tilling his field and he saw the regulars coming down the road and then to the surprise of his family, he walked inside his home and he strapped on two dueling pistols that he had as prizes from the war against the French – two French dueling pistols – he strapped on a captured French sword that he had, grabbed his musket and ran out made war one last time at the age of 80. He ambushed the regulars at close range, fired five shots, killed three regulars and in the middle of his reloading they charged with bayonets, he drew his sword and fought them sword against bayonet. He was shot in the face, stabbed sixteen times with bayonets and left for dead. His family went out to gather his body up in the morning. When they got there, to their amazement they realized he was still alive. Not only was he still alive, he was trying to reload.

He was trying to reload and do a parting shot to that column in the distance that was leaving away.

Now that man lived to be 98 years old, he lived eighteen more years.

Now, he’s a good example of why – if you ever do get in a fight – don’t ever think that you’re done just because you get shot once. You keep going. Okay?

So, the main point it, is that he understood the reality and the fact that once you decide to be the defender of the rights of these people, that never expires.

He was an Oath Keeper, right?

<crowd – RIGHT, YEAH!>

He was and he understood the big picture. When he was asked later, why he fought that day, he said that he fought because he did not ever want his children and grandchildren to be subjects of a distant King. He wanted them to be free. That’s why he fought.

Now there’s a man, there’s a man who understood the big picture…he understood the big picture and that is, that none of us ever get out of here alive.

What counts is whether or not our children are free. That’s all that counts.

I gotta tell ya, when I first thought of Oath keepers, one thing I want to make clear is that I thought about this idea while I was working for Congressman Ron Paul’s campaign in Nevada as a volunteer, and that was a year and  half ago and that was long before November elections. Long before we knew who was going to be in the White House and which party was going to be in control.

It did not make a difference to me. It did not matter to the other gentlemen, both active duty military police and retired – did not matter to any of us -- who was going to become president. We were going to found this organization regardless, because we understood the time had come to remind all of our brothers in arms of their obligations and to make sure that they stood firm. [Who was in the White House] did not matter.

Now, I took the oath twice, first as a paratrooper, first as a soldier, than as a lawyer and no doubt many of you have dim views of lawyers, I’m sure.

It is a fact, a sad fact that most politicians and most lawyers – when they raise their right hand and take the oath – they kind of roll their eyes and smirk and just mumble the words because they don’t really mean them. You know?

But there are some who do.

We have some here today who are legislators who keep their oath.

I, as an attorney, have done all I can to keep my oath, sometimes at the harm of my own practice, I’ve done that.

Now, there is one gentleman in our history that I consider to be the patron saint of all patriot lawyers. Who would that be?

That’s right, James Otis. Do you know his story?

James Otis, one of the founding patriots, was a lawyer in Boston and he had the prestigious position of being what you would call the equivalent of the Attorney General of today. He was that for the government – the Crown – in Boston.

And back – I believe it was in 1760 – he was asked as part of his job as a government lawyer to defend the writs of assistance, which were the general wits and warrants allowing the customs agent to go anywhere he wanted to, to search any place he felt like without probable cause, without having to go before a judge and show probably cause.

And the colonists understood that was an egregious violation of their natural rights to their own security and their own personal effects and also their rights as Englishmen.

And so, he was asked to defend these writs. Do you think he did it?

What do you think he did?

He did not. He refused…and not only did he refuse to defend the writs of assistance, he resigned his position and became the volunteer lawyer for the colonists who were challenging the writs.

That’s what he did.

And he, in a four hour – I think it was four hours – in a fiery argument, he laid out the causes of the colonists. It was one of the first times that he…he stood up and said, Look, this is a violation of the rights of Englishmen, this is the kind of abuse of power that has cost one King his throne and another his head.  He said this is the kind of thing that we consider to be a violation not only of the rights of Englishmen, but also of our natural rights.

And later on, many years later, John Adams – looking back on the history of the American Revolution said, Then and there the child of liberty was born.

<transcriber comment, the actual words were “”then and there was the child Independence born,”>

Because out of a great multitude of men gathered in that hall, they all went away ready to take up arms against the writs of assistance.

Now did James Otis win his case?

No he did not. He lost the case. The courts ruled that the writs of assistance were perfectly constitutional under the English Constitution. But was that the end of the argument?

<crowd – NO!>

No it was not.

The argument against the writs is where our 4^th Amendment comes from. As as I said a little while ago, it took fifteen years of argument before the shots were fired, but everything that happened there, we are seeing again today. I am sad to say, that the long train of abuses that the Declaration of Independence lays out – it’s very frightening to look at that, and read that and see the parallels to today.

Denial of jury trial, confiscation of property, warrantless searches, the use of Admiralty courts – back then the Admiralty courts were used. No one was going to convict John Hancock, no jury in Boston was going to convict the smuggler, John Hancock of being a smuggler, right?

So the crown knew they couldn’t rely on the jury, they had to try someone like that in an admiralty court and then whisk them away across the seas to England. That was the extraordinary rendition of their day. Take them someplace else.

And sadly, we see a lot of modern parallels to that today, the most dangerous being the claim that the President can declare any one of you, any President, this one now, also, could declare any one of you to be an unlawful combatant, whether you’re a citizen or not – even citizens, and sweep you out from under the shield of the Bill of Rights and try you instead by military tribunal.

Like Patrick Henry said, it’s better to know the truth and face it and prepare for it. And the truth is there are many things that are done in fighting the “war of terrorism” that can be turned inward on you, so you need to be alert and aware to the reality of how close we are to having our Constitutional Republic destroyed.

Alright. Well…what we’re going to do here today…we’re going to have a couple of speakers…….

<end transcription>

Link, YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eactx2yX-w