From the June 2001 Idaho Observer:

Who are the real Americans: Those who beg for government to make our decisions for them or those who demand the right to govern themselves?

The McGuckins, who apparently became disenchanted with the federal government in the mid 80s after the IRS used its lawless authority to force them into a bankruptcy that cut their property holdings in half and initiated this middle-class family's descent into abject poverty.

The dominant media has made claims that the McGuckins had “anti-government” sentiments and that they were “paranoid.” The media “spun” such sentiments in way to infer that Americans who are paranoid and untrusting of government are mentally disordered, unamerican and irrational.

The following passage is from “General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century” by Pierre Proudhon:

“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom or the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.”

It would be hard to deny that to be governed is to acquiesce to the conditions indicated above. So, with our understanding of the history that gave birth to the American people, which ones are mentally imbalalanced, unamerican and irrational -- Americans who desire to be governed or Americans, like the McGuckins, who desire to govern themselves?