Enderle Condemns GOP Call To Arms Comment

For immediate release: June 28, 2012

Contact:  Lance Enderle 517-285-3376

Lansing – Just minutes after the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, former GOP spokesman Matthew Davis called for armed rebellion.  In a tone more redolent of 1861 South Carolina than 1773 Boston, Davis’s email, entitled “Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?,” equated today’s Supreme Court ruling to colonial tyranny, concluding with the vague threat: “God willing, this oppression will be lifted…before the first shot is fired.” 

When called, Davis defended his remarks.  “You can’t [just] have people walking around with lattes and signs.  Armed rebellion is the end point of that confrontation.” 

Lance Enderle, Democratic candidate for Michigan’s 8^th Congressional District, was quick to respond. 

“Reasonable Americans can disagree, vehemently, about political decisions.  But when the rhetoric turns to armed rebellion and violence, it is no longer dissent.  It’s yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, and it’s a crime against the United States.  Inciting violence is not protected by the First Amendment.  The Michigan GOP and the Mackinac Center should immediately condemn Mr. Davis for his violent, dangerous, and frankly illegal conduct,” Enderle said. 

He then pointed out that his opponent, incumbent Mike Rogers, who sits on the Committee for Homeland Security and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, should also be quick to condemn Mr. Davis’s call to arms. 

“If Mike was doing his job, he would be at the forefront, asking for the Department of Homeland Security to open investigations of Mr. Davis and the Mackinac Center for possible seditious conspiracy.”

18 USC 2385 states that “whoever knowingly or willfully prints, publishes…[or] distributes any printed matter advocating…or teaching the propriety of overthrowing any such government in the United States by force or violence…shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the next five years.” 

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