Patricia Schroeder: “I rise at this time to take the cowboy hat off the militia problem that the Speaker tried to put on it this weekend on…”

“I rise at this time to take the cowboy hat off the militia problem that the Speaker tried to put on it this weekend on national television. For any of you who were watching the Speaker this weekend on national television, he said, 'We have to understand there is in rural America, particularly in the West, a genuine fear of the Federal Government.' He added that this genuine fear seemed to be driving otherwise average Westerners into the Rocky Mountains to create some kind of a Rocky Mountain guerrilla group or some such thing. Well, I rise to say that is not true, that that is an extremist position in the West, and that we in the West are not encouraging that type of thing. I also find all of this very interesting, because I would be terribly surprised if the Speaker or any other Member of this body rose to talk about the genuine fear of the Crips and the Bloods or the genuine fear of the Members of the Aryan Nation, or the genuine fear of the Ku Klux Klan, or on and on and on. We would tell them all to grow up and get a life. Now, what about these militias and what about the paranoid style of politics that has been practiced by some of these overgrown, overaged, GI Joes that appear to be rather on a lost patrol? Well, first of all, unfortunately, it is not a regional phenomenon. They are not all hunkered into the Rocky Mountains. The militia pup tents have raised their heads all over the country.”