Opinion

Smith's foes should consider the alternative

By now, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith must realize the Internet is like a Texas rattlesnake: It strikes when provoked.

The San Antonio lawmaker poked a stick into the snake pit last year when he sponsored the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill that sought to order Internet companies to remove links to websites that offer pirated content.

The retaliation was swift: biting criticism of censorship coupled with protests by tech giants such as Google. Smith turned tail in January, postponing consideration of SOPA.

Unsurprisingly, Internet freedom advocates remain stirred up, and their venom is seeping into Smith's re-election campaign. One group, a political action committee, has launched an effort online to raise thousands of dollars for anti-Smith ads.

The group, Test PAC, differs from the cash-flush super PACs, which are sustaining the race for the Republican presidential nomination by supporting favored candidates with negative ads.

For one, its aims are entirely annihilative: Destroy Smith at all costs.

Such foes should recognize, though, that the repudiation of Smith has a side effect, which is the support of his opponents in the Republican primary for Congressional District 21.

One is Richard Morgan, a 24-year-old Internet freedom advocate whose campaign, ironically, has no presence on the Web.

Smith's most prominent opponent is retired Sheriff Richard Mack.

To a degree, Mack's challenge fits within the contentious SOPA story.

He has described himself as a “constitutional conservative,” a stance that would seem an entrée into the hearts of anti-SOPA activists who believe the failed legislation was a violation of the First Amendment. Mack is certainly milking the SOPA controversy in his campaign.

His adherence to individual freedom, however, reaches far beyond protecting speech on the Internet, careening afield into the realm of conspiracies and anti-government militias.

Mack did not respond to my request for an interview. But his career is documented on the free Web.

From 1988 to 1996, he served as the Democratic sheriff of a small Arizona county near the border. He'd dreamed of becoming an FBI agent like his father but wasn't selected, according to a previous article in the San Antonio Express-News.

At some point, Mack grew to distrust the federal government and became aligned with the Patriot movement.

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Patriots as “people who generally believe that the federal government is an evil entity that is engaged in a secret conspiracy to impose martial law.” It also reports that Mack himself believes county sheriffs are “the highest legitimate law enforcement authorities” in the United States.

Along with white separatist Randy Weaver, Mack co-authored “Vicki, Sam, and America: How the Government Killed All Three,” a book that recounts a fatal siege by FBI agents against Weaver and his family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992. The incident inspired the militia movement of the 1990s.

Mack is a member of the Oath Keepers, a group of military and law enforcement officers who say they will not obey “unconstitutional orders,” such as “orders to disarm the American people or to place them under martial law.”

He spoke in December at the 53rd anniversary banquet of the John Birch Society, the right-wing group whose founder, Robert Welch, described government as “always and inevitably an enemy of individual freedom.”

Last year, the Patriots of Gillespie County recruited Mack to run against Smith, providing him a home and office in a congressional district that's 60 percent Republican.

Considering the primacy of the primary, anyone intent on booting Smith from Congress should ask whether extremism in the defense of liberty is a vice.

Those who believe it is should balance their ardor to remove Smith with an effort to replace him with someone more reasonable.

As for Mack, his résumé reads like that of someone who takes freedom too far.

bchasnoff@express-news.net