APTOPIX Ranching Standoff Protest

Ryan Bundy talks on the phone at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016. Bundy is one of the protesters occupying the refuge to object to a prison sentence for local ranchers for burning federal land.

(Rebecca Boone | AP)

America, meet your new social justice warriors.

An armed militia has taken over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, which you'd think would cause law-and-order conservatives some consternation.

This started because ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond were ordered to report to prison Monday after being convicted of arson (charged under counter-terrorism laws).

"I didn't come here to shoot. I came here to die," one militiaman ominously declared.

Jon Ritzheimer, a former Marine, dedicated a video to his children, announcing, "I am 100 percent willing to lay my life down, to fight against tyranny in this country."

Michiganders might be familiar with Ritzheimer's work, as he last year threatened to arrest U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., for voting for the Iran nuclear deal.

Why was she the first target? Ritzheimer cited his "strong ties with the Michigan State Militia" and argued Michigan's "lax gun laws" would make the plan possible.

Crazy talk is one thing. Armed insurrection is another.

This should send a chill down the spine of law-abiding citizens, especially when you consider that since 9/11, more people have been "killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims," The New York Times reports.

But to some, these folks are freedom fighters. They're just protesting an unfeeling, overreaching government, even if they've resorted to illegal means.

The comparisons to Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks practically write themselves -- you know, if you set aside the fact that these civil rights heroes never brandished weapons (and let's remember that if they did, our history would be very different).

And, of course, you'd have to ignore the vast differences in their causes. Civil rights protesters took on Jim Crow laws (and the violence they bred), but it wasn't a lawless movement. Rather, activists wanted a restoration of the 13th and 14th amendments ensuring freedom and equality for African-Americans.

The self-appointed well-armed militia in Oregon isn't quite so noble. In fact, they're blatantly advocating lawlessness. The Hammonds got caught and admitted they set the fires.

Most of us believe that if you do the crime, you do the time.

But like Cliven Bundy in Nevada, who refused to pay $1 million in grazing fees he owed to the feds, the Hammonds consider themselves special. (Not surprisingly, the Oregon siege is led by Bundy's son, Ammon, who was apparently OK with government "tyranny" in 2010 when he took a sweet federal loan of $530,000).

Now they're all trying to exploit anti-government sentiment -- which has reached a fever pitch on the right (just ask GOP front-runner Donald Trump) -- to cover up their illegal activity.

They're not patriots. They're criminals and freeloaders.

What they really want is free stuff -- something conservatives usually rally against when it's welfare, food stamps or Obamacare.

They want the federal government to give up land so they can use it and make money, be it from ranching, logging, mining or other means. Somehow, I'm not sure we can trust them to protect the environment and public health.

But even you're inclined to support this in the name of free enterprise, it's taxpayers who own this land. It would just be bad business for the American people to give away such valuable assets, especially to crooks.

We'll see if the militiamen try to provoke a confrontation with law enforcement. Let's hope they don't flirt with Ruby Ridge-style martyrdom.

Nobody wants that to happen. And for now, it's easy to mock folks for invading a bird sanctuary.

But since the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks, many Americans have been in a full-blown panic about radical jihadists.

It's probably time to take homegrown terrorism more seriously.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. She can be reached at susan@sjdemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.