WFFJ-TV

Because public servants have been violating the Constitution for years, unabated, the activity has unfortunately become normalized. When citizens finally wake up and decide to hold those servants accountable to their violations, it may seem a bit extreme but is absolutely necessary for the preservation of our democratically elected republic to survive.

“The irony of Tomaselli’s article is in the designation of Tactical Civics™ as an “anti-government” group,” wrote Tactical Civics'TM national spokesman, Jeff Calhoun in a letter to the editor of the Bangor Daily News regarding this libelous article. “If one were to actually seek to understand the values of our mission, she would find that Tactical Civics™ is unrivaled as the most pro-government organization in America. We believe and teach that the government of these united States of America, ordained and established in our Supreme Law as well as in our state constitutions, is the most sublime ever conceived in the human mind throughout the annals of human history. The four pillars of our organization are reflections of the wisdom of one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams, who said, “Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion; avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

“In light of Adams’ wisdom, Tactical Civics’™ first pillar is to glorify Jesus Christ,” said Calhoun. “We do this, in part, by calling Christians in America to repent of our sins of laziness and sloth and return to lives of responsible and repentant faithfulness to our civic duties and authority. Far from being either anti-government or fringe, Tactical Civics™ is teaching We The People to pursue a lawful, peaceful, and highly engaged volunteerism to fulfill our stipulated duties and authority, which lie at the center of what it is to be American.”

Calhoun noted, “[The] Maine constitution states, along with every other state constitution, the fundamental premise upon which all government rests, as articulated in both the Preamble and Article I, Section 2. [Maine's] Preamble states: 'Objects of government. We the People of Maine, in order to establish justice, insure tranquility, provide for our mutual defense, promote our common welfare, and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, acknowledging with grateful hearts the goodness of the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe in affording us an opportunity, so favorable to the design; and, imploring God's aid and direction in its accomplishment, do agree to form ourselves into a free and independent State, by the style and title of the State of Maine and do ordain and establish the following Constitution for the government of the same,’” said Calhoun. “And in Section 2 of Article I: 'All power is inherent in the people; all free governments are founded in their authority and instituted for their benefit; they have therefore an unalienable and indefeasible right to institute government, and to alter, reform, or totally change the same, when their safety and happiness require it.’”

“These fundamental principles, enshrined in our highest law, place a tremendous weight of duty on We The People to actively maintain and hold accountable the government We created, and to do so on the authority We stipulate to ourselves within it,” Calhoun continued. “Calling these values 'anti-government' reveals either a complete ignorance of what our government actually is or a deep hatred for the Constitutional rule of law our Founders gave us.”

Jon Ellis, from Mount Chase (near Patten/Island Falls) is regional director for Tactical CivicsTM in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. He is co-owner of Ellis Family Market in Patten and East Millinocket. Mr. Ellis has been actively recruiting members to participate in the Tactical CivicsTM program in order to learn how to lawfully hold public servants from the State level on down to local town council members accountable to their oaths of office which they all had to take before being admitted into that office. In Tomaselli’s article he was unjustly maligned as some sort of hate monger, neo-Nazi extremist. Being a member of his local church and a prominent businessman in his area, those insinuations skirt the edges of libel against Ellis, which is actionable in a court of law - especially since they are not true.

Tomaselli mentioned in the article that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has listed Tactical CivicsTM as an “extremist anti-government group.” But the SPLC has been losing credibility lately by labeling anyone who opposes unconstitutional government actions as “extremist” and “anti-government.” It is believed by some that the mission of the SPLC now is to simply keep the citizen-slaves on the banker-run government plantation by demonizing and ostracizing anyone who points out the unlawful activities of government - which are running rampant in wholesale fashion these days. No rational, objective thinker really takes any label put out by the highly biased SPLC seriously, anymore.

“The entire article begins with a conclusion reached without investigation but rather predicated on the mythical and ever-growing “hate map” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists supposed hate and anti-government groups,” said Calhoun. “I say, ‘supposed’ because the SPLC has a well-documented history of erasing the lines between actual hate groups and people they just disagree with.”

Tomaselli then pivots to a brief, but curiously unrelated, discussion on self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, Christopher Polhous, whose group, the “Blood Tribe,” now presumably based in Maine, runs around the country using fear and harassment against homosexual and transgender folks at their “pride” events in order to intimidate them. Her article appears to have been a veiled attempt to equate Tactical Civics to that radical neo-Nazi group - of which the two have nothing in common.

Tomaselli’s Bangor Daily News article then segues into mentioning Maine’s anti-paramilitary laws in order to further muddy the waters by what seems to be a subtle suggestion to the readers that Tactical Civics’ members may be engaged in some form of paramilitary training.

This writer has attended some Tactical Civics seminars in person and has met some of the local people involved, most of whom are middle-aged through senior citizen and are nowhere near the physical fitness level necessary to be running through obstacle courses, doing basic drill and maneuvers, hitting the rifle range and doing bayonet training - as the phrase “paramilitary training” would imply. Rather, these folks are interested in reading books, learning history, understanding the verbiage of the State and Federal constitutions, basic jurisprudence and legal procedure in order to take the necessary legal steps to remove those specific public servants from office who do not adhere to their oath to uphold the state and U.S. Constitutions while occupying their office of public trust. So, the connection of Tactical Civics to “paramilitary” activity is frivolous and tenuous at best, libelous at worst. This form of sloppy, left-wing “journalism” seems to have unfortunately become the norm at newspapers like the Bangor Daily News over the past several decades and those who are able to think for themselves and objectively analyze the world around them are getting tired of it.

“At this point it is superfluous to address the outrageously manufactured “guilt-by-association” attempts of Ms Tomaselli in mentioning Tactical Civics™ in the same breath with neo-Nazi groups, which we abhor; private paramilitary organizations, which we agree are unlawful, as are any allusions of violence, vigilante justice and Spanish inquisitions,” Calhoun wrote in his letter to the Bangor Daily News. “While these are cartoonish caricatures which, we as an organization would ordinarily scoff at, except that by making these wild associations, you have maligned the character and reputation of a good man and remarkable leader in your state. You owe Jon Ellis a public apology and our mission a public retraction of the untruths you published.”

It goes without saying that reading books and holding errant public servants accountable to violations of their oath of office is not “paramilitary” activity and is certainly not anti-government or illegal. The Tactical Civics organization merely seeks to use lawful means to remove bad actors in government from their office and leave the remaining public servants in place who will do their job in compliance with the rules they all swore an oath to uphold as laid out in the state and federal constitutions.

Recently, Ellis was advised that the State of Maine would be “looking into” his two grocery stores’ liquor licenses. It is unclear, however, in what way the reading of the state and federal constitutions and attempting to hold public servants accountable to those superior laws would have anything to do with a liquor license, but bad actors in government will always feel threatened when their job performance is called into question, even if they are knowingly violating the law as laid out in the Constitutions they all swore an oath to uphold.

Mr. Ellis is currently considering his legal options as to how he may respond to the Bangor Daily News’ potentially libelous and unfounded accusations made against him.