Western Dakotas Belong in the American Redoubt
People are on the move around the globe in search of personal security and freedom. The same societal collapse that puts millions of families from the Middle East and Central America onto a northward-wending course is happening to traditional populations within the United States.
According to Wikipedia, the American Redoubt is clustered around Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, as well as eastern Washington and eastern Oregon. It is “a safe haven for conservative, libertarian-leaning Christians and Jews” in a United States plagued with ever-widening circles of liberal dysfunction and social decay. The Redoubt or Fortress easily calls for comparison to the Pilgrims and Puritans who left Europe for a more wholesome life in the North American wilderness. Abraham and Moses would have understood this form of survivalism.
A founding spokesman for the Redoubt movement, James Wesley Rawles, has been identified in a recent Washington Post article as pursuing a positive form of segregation beyond racism: “Those interviewed in the American Redoubt insisted they are not trying to segregate themselves by race. And while the Aryan Nations white supremacist group was headquartered near Hayden Lake in the 1980s and 1990s, Rawles has described the Redoubt movement as ‘anti-racist’ and said like-minded folks of all races are welcome.”
The Post article points out that “Those migrating to the Redoubt are some of the most motivated members of what is known as the prepper movement, which advocates readiness and self-reliance in man-made or natural disasters that could create instability for years. It’s scenario-planning that is gaining adherents and becoming mainstream in what Redoubt preppers described as an era of fear and uncertainty.”
Mainstream media is unwittingly supplying motivation to the Redoubt movement: “They are anxious about recent terrorist attacks from Paris to San Bernardino, Calif., to Orlando; pandemics such as Ebola in West Africa; potential nuclear attacks from increasingly provocative countries such as North Korea or Iran; and the growing political, economic and racial polarization in the United States that has deepened during the 2016 presidential election.”
Ted Koppel’s recent bestseller Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath tacitly supports the Redoubt movement and argues that the Mormon state of Utah should be included in the geographic confines already defined. Mormons have included prepper self-reliance and survivalism as central, stockpiling vast warehouses of food and gear in case of societal breakdown.
Also overlooked in defining the physical boundaries of the American Redoubt would be the western Dakotas. The Missouri River is the symbolic continental divide between the east and west, liberalism and conservatism, farming and ranching. The Black Hills should be seen as the foothills of the Rockies in this sense, perhaps a castle wall for the Redoubt with the Missouri as a moat. It is common to hear after elections about the almost unbroken “Republican stronghold” out west, with Democrats sagely running as GOP just to have a chance.
There are probably a number of areas that could be included in the Redoubt that are not currently included or mentioned in the article. Parts of Colorado, northern New Mexico, and northern Arizona could be included as well. There have been very self-sufficient people living in those areas for many decades. A lot of the 80s and 90s survivalists, forerunners of the preppers, moved to these areas as they provided exactly what was needed for long term survival and still do. The Redoubt could include much of the Rocky Mountain States outside of the metro areas within them.
It is pretty sad when your, oh so well financed government fails on such a scale. That they can no longer provide a safe haven for all of its citizens, as opposed to just the sheeple that give them the continued green light for the usurpation of power from the individual to the government.
These people would do well to consider that that those that would give up freedom for security seldom end up with either one.
Or if Denver has some disaster, CO is nice otherwise.
But I agree, West Dakota would be part.
Matt Shea has talked with N. CA that wants to secede to form Jefferson. And East WA wants to secede to become Liberty.
Yes, a well-built lookout tower isn’t always enough in some neighborhoods.
What isn’t mentioned anywhere in this article is the neighborhood. When people know who their neighbors are, and look after them in a sense, there is much greater sense of security.