Ed and Elaine Brown, middle-aged residents of Plainfield, New Hampshire who have never done any material harm to any living being, are being surrounded by heavily armed berserkers who will almost certainly kill them.

One unmistakable clue about the lethal intentions of the armed gang surrounding the Brown residence – a polyglot gathering of “heavily armed New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts State Police, a N.H. State Police Explosives Disposal Unit, state and regional SWAT teams” — can be found in the vocabulary used to describe that dwelling.

Press accounts refer to the Brown home, a large but not prepossessing house, as a “fortress,” a “concrete castle,” or by some other expression worthy of the inaccessible secure location where Dick Cheney retires during daylight hours, lest his pallid, undead flesh spontaneously combust from exposure to pitiless daylight.

We can take it as an axiom that any residence targeted for a lethal government raid will be described in that fashion. The party targeted in the raid might live in a lean-to, a wikiup, a tar-paper shack, or a geographically displaced Central Asian yurt, but as soon as it falls under the gun-sights of government goons, that structure — however flimsy — is transformed into an “armed compound.”

In this case, the Browns – who have never committed a crime against persons or property, the only offenses over which government has moral jurisdiction – have been targeted for annihilation because they refuse to report for imprisonment. Their purported offense is to refuse to permit the Regime to steal from them the wealth they have earned through their peaceful, productive exertions.

Here is how the local media describes the “criminal” actions of the Browns:

“The Browns were convicted of plotting to hide their income to avoid paying federal income taxes on Elaine Brown’s income of $1.9 million between 1996 and 2003. They also were convicted of using $215,890 in postal money orders, cashed in smaller amounts to avoid tax-reporting levels, to pay for their home and her dental office.”

This supposed crime is referred to as “tax evasion.” We learn everything we need to know about our political system from this fact: Helots who refuse to surrender their wealth to government are prosecuted as criminals; criminals in public office who plunder that wealth and spend it illegally cannot be prosecuted as “Constitution evaders.”

In sum and substance, the Browns are guilty of using money they lawfully earned to purchase goods and services honestly rendered. There is no crime here. Yes, there are violations of “laws” enacted by a criminal Regime that even now is engaged in the armed robbery of Iraq, and plotting nuclear aggression against Iran. But the Browns have done nothing to injure anybody – including the federal government, which exnihilates fiat “money” as needed and doesn’t require tax revenue to sustain its malignant enterprises.

This is not to say that no crimes have been committed in the confrontation between the Browns and their federal persecutors. On June 7, an armed gang seized Elaine Brown’s dental office in Lebanon. Brandishing firearms in the course of theft is aggravated armed robbery, and has been prosecuted as such in New Hampshire. Were it still a state worthy of its motto, New Hampshire would file and prosecute those charges against the knuckle-dragging cretins who invaded Dr. Brown’s office, and the effete bureaucratic crooks who sent them there.

But, as noted earlier, the Feds have worse things in mind for the Browns than armed robbery. Were it not for a chance encounter between Danny Riley — a house guest who was out for a stroll with his dog on June 7 — and a knot of camouflaged Federal hit-men, the deadly deed would likely have been done already. Riley was shot at and tasered by a “Special Operations Unit” of the U.S. Marshals Service.

“We have no intention of assaulting the house,” lied Stephen Monier, a U.S. Marhsal in New Hampshire, even as his comrades cut off telephone service, Internet access, and electricity to the Borwns’ home. This is a form of escalation, a military tactic that worked so well in bringing about the peaceful, bloodless end to the 1993 siege at Waco and last December’s stand-off in Maryland that ended with the needless death of troubled veteran Jaime Dean.

For the benefit of Hannitization victims and others deprived of sophisticated mental functions: My last comment was intended to be sarcastic.

Whatever else happens as a result of the escalating ugliness in New Hampshire, the educable public should learn at least one useful lesson from the conspicuous involvement of so many State and local police units in the siege: We no longer have State and local police, but rather State and local affiliates of a unitary, militarized Homeland Security Leviathan.

Remember this: When the ATF, and then the FBI, attacked the Branch Davidian congregation in 1993 (the pretext then, as now, was tax evasion – specifically David Koresh’s supposed failure to pay various firearms fees), the local Sheriff, Jack Harwell, attempted (albeit too timidly) to interpose himself in the interests of a peaceful solution. The Feds had other plans, of course.

Today, rather than seeing themselves as representatives of local communities, even in conflicts of this sort, most (not all, but most) police are indecently eager to treat such stand-offs as public works projects – sources of lucrative overtime and an excuse to swan about in paramilitary drag and play with all the bitchin’ toys they’ve gotten from the Pentagon.

Despite all of this, I hope and pray that the Browns are not killed. But this situation displays all of the symptoms of something that will end very badly indeed.

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