At Day’s End, the Rule of Law Must Be Upheld : Montana extremists have no right to terrorize neighbors

For now, federal officials are maintaining a low-key policy of watchful waiting in Jordan, Mont., as they confront the small but apparently well-armed anti-government group that calls itself “freemen.” This effort to avoid anything that might be interpreted as provocation stems directly from the Clinton administration’s bitter experience in Waco, Texas, in 1993, when federal agents clashed with armed cultists of the Branch Davidian sect in a siege that claimed more than 70 lives, including children.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and other authorities have made clear their hope that the Montana standoff will be ended by negotiations, not by force. But however it’s arrived at, there can be only one acceptable outcome to this confrontation. The rule of law must be upheld. That means the government must prevail in its contest with the dozen or more extremists against whom a range of federal and state charges has been lodged.

For more than a year the freemen, who refuse to pay taxes, reject all government authority and espouse white supremacy, have threatened the safety and otherwise intimidated residents in and around the farming town of Jordan. Appeals by local residents to the FBI brought little help.

Not long before federal authorities finally intervened last week, arresting two freemen leaders and moving to isolate the 960-acre ranch where others are holed up, scores of residents volunteered to serve as deputies to go after the troublemakers. Except as a last resort American citizens should not have to form posses to confront the lawbreakers who live among them.

Protecting public safety is the government’s first and most vital responsibility, whether the threat comes from urban street gangs or rural anarchists. Whatever bungling occurred at Waco, that responsibility continues to be paramount.

Spokesmen for some other anti-government militias have rushed to express support for the freemen, possibly encouraged by the implicit sympathy some members of Congress have shown for the ideas, if not always the actions, of such groups.

The overwhelming majority of Americans reject the nutty notions and bullying behavior of these extremists. As a local official in Jordan put it, “We have been oppressed by the freemen and not the federal government.” The government’s task now is to end that oppression, peacefully by preference, but if need be by using the law’s full force against those who claim to respect only their own warped and intolerable rules of behavior.