SHE sits on the lookout in a
lawn chair on their front porch, her forehead glossy with sweat, Bible next to
her left foot, wind chimes clinking at her back. Her husband of 24 years is by
her side, German shepherd at his knee, handgun tucked beneath the belt on his
jeans.
High in these humid hills, Ed
and Elaine Brown have been holed up in their home for six months, refusing to
serve a five-year prison sentence for tax evasion. They all but dared law
officials to come and get them. This, they say, is a fight they're ready to die
for.
"Show me the law!"
says Ed, a trim 64-year-old with a silver mustache, whose forehead crinkles
when he gets heated. The Browns stopped paying income taxes in 1996. They say
the Constitution and Supreme Court decisions support their claims that ordinary
labor cannot be taxed. But a judge ruled against them in January, convicting
the Browns of conspiring to evade paying taxes on $1.9 million in income from
Elaine's dentistry practice.
Now, the Browns say they're
in a battle for freedom, and it just might end in bloodshed right here, in a
towering turreted house with 8-inch-thick concrete walls and an American flag
fluttering over the double-car garage. They have garnered national support,
with blogs devoted to news about the standoff and
supporters regularly showing up on the couple's doorstep with groceries.
Government and law officials
have cut off power, Internet, house phone, cell phone, television
and mail service to the couple's 110-acre compound. But their house is equipped
with solar panels, a watchtower, a satellite dish and a stockpile of food.
"We are self-sustained
like a ship," Ed says. "We don't need power from the shore to run the
ship."
FBI agents are trying to
avoid a deadly shootout reminiscent of Waco, Texas, or Ruby
Ridge, Idaho. They
have tried negotiating, waiting, begging.
"We are proceeding
carefully to make sure no one gets hurt," says U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier, the lead officer handling the siege. "We are
aware that there are guns in there."
Monier says the couple broke the law and should turn
themselves in peacefully. "They have been tried and convicted and
sentenced."
But the Browns aren't
budging.
"You remember that
little gentleman in China, Tiananmen Square?" Ed says, peering through his
sunglasses. "He was the same as we are. You can scare me, you can kill me,
but you can't intimidate me."
"We're fighting for you,
your country," adds Elaine, 66, a calm woman with short, wavy dark hair.
"This isn't just taxes."
"There's no more America,"
Ed says. "It's already gone."
"I'll die fighting,
rather than live in slavery," Elaine says. "I'll tell you that."
THE mountain air outside the
Browns' home is hot and thick with flies. On the shaded front porch overlooking
a small duck pond, a visitor in a straw hat — who drove his pickup truck for
two days from Texas to meet the Browns — eats grapes out of a paper bag and
flips through an issue of Shotgun News magazine. He introduces himself as Doug.
His last name is Tibbetts, he says, "like that
guy who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima."
Another guest, who refuses to
give his name and makes it a point to tell everyone he is armed, drove here
from Massachusetts.
He talks about illegal immigration and government corruption in a slow deep
drip of a voice that seems to irritate Ed, who frequently cuts him off.
The government, Ed says, is
at a point of "communism in its purist form."
Elaine nods.
