Poseurs and provocateurs. Any stupid ass can call himself a Three Percenter, the proof is in the practice of principle.

"I'd like to be the King of all Londinium and wear a shiny hat." ― Malcolm Reynolds

I awoke this morning to an emailed link indicating that I now have something called "a filmography." It seems I'm getting credit for playing myself in Retro Report's documentary on the undying controversy over Waco. Now, that plus a dollar is insufficient to buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, so it is important to have a sense of perspective on such things. I pull my britches on one leg at a time like everyone else, and no amount of notoriety in a civilization on the verge of collapse will be recognized after its bloody fall. In the end, history will be amnesiac on the subject of Mike Vanderboegh. Who, today, remembers those individual Romans who tried to hold back the imperial rotting disease that lead to barbarian slaughter and subjugation -- to the destruction of their entire world? No one.

Yet, as I told someone in the room that day who commented that my statement to the Birmingham City Council was doomed to failure, "God does not command us to succeed. He does command us to stand."

But it is important to remember just what it is we claim to stand for. I have been clear about this in the "Three Percent Catechism: A discipline not for the faint-hearted."

These four principles -- moral strength, physical readiness, no first use of force and no targeting of innocents -- are the hallmarks of the Three Percent ideal. Anyone who cannot accept them as a self-imposed discipline in the fight to restore the Founders' Republic should find something else to do and cease calling themselves a "Three Percenter."

Yet there are apparently many people who have adopted the moniker of Three Percenter, for whatever reason, but who wouldn't recognize these principles if they came up and bit them in the ass.

This was brought home to me once again on Monday when I received a distressed phone call from one of my old 1st Alabama Cavalry militia leaders from the 90s who had been to something advertised as a Three Percent meet and greet. The organizer of this event was the proclaimed and newly minted "President" of the Alabama Three Percent, one Phil Ingram. By his own statement, Mr. Ingram's claim to command of the Alabama Three Percent traces to his "appointment" to said post by one Robert Trask of Kentucky.

Okay.

Whatever.

This sort of empty "empire building" was one thing that made the 90s so problematic for the constitutional militia movement, and why I deliberately formulated the Three Percent idea as a movement, an idea, a philosophy and a discipline BUT NOT AN ORGANIZATION. Attempts at large regional, state or national organizations, anything beyond local formations, are subject to infiltration, dysfunction, discredit and collapse. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.

But mere empire building in this case would be unremarkable were it not for the very slender reed that Mr. Trask has, by Mr. Ingram's own claim, chosen to support the concept of the Three Percent in Alabama. By all accounts, Mr. Ingram arrived at the venue swilling beer as he unassed his vehicle and later graduated to joints. A few cursory questions revealed that said Mr. Ingram had never heard of me (which is certainly no sin) nor had he heard of, or internalized, the principles of the Three Percent (which is).

As Malcolm Reynolds observed, you may wish to be the King of Londinium and wear a shiny hat, but that does not make it so. So whenever someone comes up to you and claims to be a Three Percenter -- especially when he or she pretends to be a leader of Three Percenters -- a close eye upon their actions and a few simple questions from the Three Percent Catechism ought to determine whether they are persons of principle or poseurs and/or provocateurs.

Either Mr. Ingram or Mr. Trask, the putative kingmaker in this disaster-in-waiting, may contact me to dispute this account.