Would you like to live in a walled community full of several thousand gun owners focused on guns, gun use and their misconceptions about what constitutes freedom and equality? Well, if that’s something that interests you, then the Citadel may be right for you! The Citadel is a community that may be built in the hills of Idaho later this year. Now, I know what you’re thinking: this is simply too good to be true! The bad news is, it’s real. I took a self-guided tour of the Citadel’s website, iiicitadel.com, to see just what this place is all about, and I’m here to report that it’s even more horrible than it sounds.
The first thing you see upon reaching the site’s homepage is a big advertisement prompting you to buy an AR-15 rifle “before it’s too late.” I can only assume they added “before it’s too late” because they fear that Congress will actually do something right and pass an assault weapons ban. That assumption is the first of many mistakes this website – and this organization as a whole – makes.
A little further down the home page the creators of the website have summed up the founding principles of their community in four very manageable bullet points, evidently deciding that complete explanations for these principles are overrated. The first of these bullet points simply reads: “Patriotism.” Rather vague, but I suppose that’s all one really needs to say to attract the kind of people who would actually invest their hard-earned money into this farce.
The second bullet point voices pride in American exceptionalism. The fact that these people – whoever they are (the website does not give a list of names of founders or financial backers, which is very suspect) – take pride in American exceptionalism tells me one of two things: either they don’t understand what that concept actually means, or the definition of irony is completely lost on them. Neither is very flattering with respect to their intelligence.
American exceptionalism is the false belief that Americans, simply by virtue of being American, can build it bigger and better and have a duty to spread democracy and freedom. It’s not looked on very favorably in the international community and with good reason; it’s not really a sound philosophy. It’s little more than overzealous, nationalistic fervor. That being the case, pride in American exceptionalism is best avoided.
The third bullet point claims loyalty to America’s history of liberty won by our founding fathers, which suggests that all Americans aren’t glad to have our freedoms and don’t appreciate what the founding fathers tried to do. Of course I admire the men who founded the United States, and I appreciate their vision. That being said, I still reserve the right to criticize certain things about them without being struck by lightning or some other form of divine retribution. To say that only people who live in the Citadel or who share similar values appreciate the founding fathers is pretentious and just dead wrong.
The fourth and final bullet point explains that residents will be, by mandate, physically prepared to respond to a natural disaster (Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina are cited as examples) or a man-made disaster such as the failure of a power grid. Given that the location of this community is cited as “the mountains of Idaho,” I doubt devastating hurricanes will be much of an issue. Also, I’m not sure how much of a power grid there will be to fail out there, either. But those are semantics, and the minds behind the Citadel are clearly not concerned with finer details.
But that’s because the Citadel is not founded on details; it’s founded on Thomas Jefferson’s idea of rightful liberty, to be more exact. Rightful liberty, for those who don’t know, is, according to Jefferson, “…unobstructed action according to our will within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others…”. Contrary to what Citadel people might like to think, there are still limits that can and should be placed on this kind of liberty. Jefferson said so himself. Those limits should be restricted when exercising our liberty robs someone else of their rights. I’m sure my view of where that threshold is would be very different from the views of the people behind the Citadel, but that’s another story.
The introduction concludes by saying that Marxists, Socialists, Liberals and Establishment Republicans would find that life in the Citadel is not compatible with their viewpoints and lifestyles. That’s code for: “you’re not welcome here.” This essentially creates a hyper-conservative organization, as if there was ever any doubt about that.
In addition to the exclusion of those various political groups, I would be curious to know Citadel policy on admitting minority groups or people of non-Christian faiths. Judging by the sheer conservatism of the thing, I would doubt that there would be many, if any, admitted, if any even apply that is. If this absurdity ever comes to fruition, I would be very interested to see the percentages of the demographics that are admitted. I think they would be skewed very far in one direction.
If, after such a charming and attractive introduction, you aren’t yet convinced that the Citadel is the place for you, they have more to say. Most of the rest of the site revolves around what they refer to as the “American icon of Liberty.” This icon appears to be the impetus behind the entire idea. Every “able bodied Patriot” within the Citadel will be required to own them, learn about them and practice with them regularly. The giant ad at the top of the page kind of gives away what that icon is, but if you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s rifles! More specifically, the AR-15 assault rifle. You know, a variant of the one Adam Lanza used a to kill twenty-six people in the unspeakable tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary. That icon of liberty.
You see, in the Citadel everyone is required to own, maintain and know how to use an AR-15 assault rifle. And what’s more, it is mandatory that residents carry a loaded sidearm with them at all times when they visit the town center. Because that’s what the Citadel is at its very core; a town based entirely on a gun obsession. According the website, guns will also hold a central role in their school’s curriculum. At age thirteen, kids will be required to pass a firearms proficiency test as a rite of passage into adulthood.
In this article I have only covered a fraction of the nonsense and insanity present on this website and in the ideology of the Citadel, and I urge each and every one of you to go there yourself and see the rest of the ludicrous content. I laughed a lot and you will too; it’s very obviously a scam.
But after I finished laughing I thought about something. This website is not a hyperbolic parody of an extreme viewpoint, created strictly to poke fun at the pro-gun ideology. This is a serious proposal that, if the website is to be believed, a few hundred people have already bought into, and as such it is seriously disturbing. To think that a group of people, no matter how small, no matter how remote, could devote themselves fully to a radical society that is built around the preservation and proliferation of instruments of violence is frightening.
Now I’m not saying that I think these people will rise up and take over our country; far from it, I think that’s impossible. What I think this should call attention to, though, is the raw susceptibility of widespread ignorance to manipulation and pressure, which can move this quickly from the realm of irrationality to the realm of dangerous delusion. Because there are people out there who truly believe that without their guns all of their freedoms would be taken away from them and they would be living under a government that resembled Fascist Italy or National Socialist Germany. •
