Opinion

'An inscrutable purpose' in Hill Country

Reports regarding the chief of the Inner Station were ominous.

The Burnt Orange Report, for one, had called him “a crazy person.”

The chief, as it were, is Richard Mack, former sheriff of a rural Arizona county who's now running for Congress.

The Inner Station is an office, provided to Mack by the Patriots of Gillespie County, nestled in Fredericksburg, the heart of a district splayed across the Hill Country from here to Austin that Mack hopes to wrest from Rep. Lamar Smith.

I was traveling there because I'd written a column about Mack that he didn't like. I'd written it without talking to him because he hadn't returned my call.

Now I'd been summoned there by his campaign manager to discover the real “Sheriff Mack.”

I felt like Marlow in “Heart of Darkness” for at least one reason: I was anxious to meet Mack precisely because others believed he was insane.

Instead of a steamer on the Congo, I powered my sedan up the interstate.

The bluebonnets that morning did not inspire dread like “an immense matted jungle,” although a mist obscured the tops of the hills.

Mack's office, likewise, was not ringed with shrunken heads.

A bowl of fresh mints, rather, greeted visitors inside, and I availed myself of one before sitting across from Mack.

“I don't think it's any secret, I didn't like (your column),” he said. “It just didn't say who I really am.”

My column had noted facts: Mack doesn't trust the federal government to uphold the Constitution. He believes the sheriff, a post he hasn't held since 1996, is the highest law enforcement authority in the land.

He's a gun-rights activist who owns more than a dozen firearms, and he's an icon of the Patriots, a group of people who believe the federal government is engaged in a secret conspiracy to impose martial law.

“I don't think it's too secret anymore,” Mack told me, noting the passage of a law he argues gives greater power to the military to detain U.S. citizens, the National Defense Authorization Act.

He said the military should patrol the border with Mexico. Otherwise, federal authorities should butt out.

“They cannot tell me what to do,” Mack said, because he can decide what laws are “stupid” and what laws are “constitutional.”

Doing so requires local law enforcement to “interpose on behalf of your people. It means put yourself in the way,” he said. “It's not a violent interposition I have ever advocated. I'm the most peaceful guy there's ever been.”

I brought up the white separatist Randy Weaver.

Federal agents killed Weaver's wife and son at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, sparking the militia movement. Mack co-authored a book with Weaver about the siege, displayed beside his desk.

“You and every other reporter don't know what he stands for,” Mack said. “All he wanted was to live with his family and be left alone. He has nothing against any race.”

I asked for Weaver's number. Mack called him on his cell and gave me the phone.

“I'm not a bigot,” Weaver told me. “I am a racist. I think it is wrong, as far as nature is concerned, to mix races.

“Obama and his wife are bigots,” he added.

I could tell Mack wanted the phone back.

“I believe revolution is the only solution anymore unless Richard Mack comes in,” Weaver said. “We'd have to take it back by force.”

I returned the phone to Mack.

“Did you clarify that you're not a white supremacist?” Mack asked him.

I couldn't hear Weaver's response.

But I suspect he reiterated his view of the Obamas because Mack laughed and added, “They certainly seem to support the Black Panthers and all the crimes they committed.”

Off the phone, he told me, “My views are not his views, and I don't want to accept responsibility for his views.”

Leaving the office, I felt I had glimpsed a heart of immense darkness: Randy Weaver's.

As for Mack, I don't know what's in his heart. After all, he's running for Congress.

I don't think he's crazy. But I detect something in Mack even more troubling than avowed racism, something similar to what worried Marlow in the wilderness — “an inscrutable purpose.”

bchasnoff@express-news.net

Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, is a U.S. representative. His office was misstated in a column on March 29's page B1 of the Express-News and on mySA.com.