Profiles in Wingnuttery: The Browns

We've got another standoff between the feds and some wingnuts who are willing to become martyrs for a silly cause. This time the cause is the extremist libertarian belief that the government does not have a right to collect taxes. A dentist and her husband have built a survivalist compound out in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire and they're holed up with some wacko militia types and being visited by a Ruby Ridge survivor. PLAINFIELD, New Hampshire (AP) -- To avoid serving prison sentences for tax evasion, Ed Brown and his wife, Elaine, have locked themselves off from the world on their own terms. From behind the 8-inch concrete walls of their 110-acre hilltop compound, the couple taunt police and SWAT teams and play to reporters and government-haters with references to past standoffs that turned deadly. ... The Browns raised the specter of the first case, the 1992 shootout at an Idaho property called Ruby Ridge, by holding a news conference Monday with Randy Weaver, whose wife and child were killed there along with a deputy U.S. marshal. Ed Brown warned authorities they wouldn't take him alive: "We either walk out of here free or we die." ... The Browns' home on an isolated dirt roads includes a turret that offers a 360-degree view of the property and a driveway that is sometimes barricaded with SUVs. Ed Brown, a retired exterminator, and his wife, a dentist, have bragged that the compound is self-sufficient and capable of running entirely on solar, wind and geothermal energies. [full story] I have a very hard time feeling bad for these people who basically commit suicide by cop in these standoffs (I do feel horribly for the children hurt because the adults around them are idiots - but I put the blame 100% on the wingnuts who don't know when to give up). By the time there's a standoff, it's far beyond the point where the whole thing can be over with no consequences. At that point, you're either going to prison or dying. No matter how wrapped up in your cause you are, nobody of any importance is going to consider you a political prisoner and a victim of injustice. If anything, we people who work hard and pay our taxes to contribute to the functioning of our government are pissed off that the money we work so hard to make is being wasted right now on you spoiled little brats. And this sure is not going to be good publicity for the Free State Project! Do us all a favor and either surrender or start that hail of bullets that will be your end. Just do it soon. I don't want to have to keep reading about your continued stupidity every day.