The Blood of Patriots

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

– Thomas Jefferson.

Monday is Memorial Day, when we pause to remember and honor those who gave their lives for their country. Traditionally, this observance has been reserved for those who have served in the armed forces. It is fitting that they be remembered, even in the battles that we joined that were not worthy of such a sacrifice.*

However, we need also to remember those who gave up their lives at home in the cause of freedom: John** and Robert Kennedy, Medgar Evers and Dr. Martin Luther King, Vicky Weaver at Ruby Ridge, and Joe Vogler come to mind.

This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of Joe Vogler's death under highly suspicious circumstances. He was the founder of the Alaskan Independence Party, and ran for Governor of Alaska on that ticket in 1972, 1978, and 1986.

Born in Kansas in 1913, Mr. Vogler (right) graduated from the University of Kansas with a law degree. During World War II, he moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, where he worked with the Army Corps of Engineers. He later described Alaska during this period "a place [where] you could do anything you were big enough to try." In 1951, he filed a homestead claim for 320 acres near Fairbanks, and began mining at Homestake Creek. It was this interest in mining that gave him the impetus to begin a political career twenty years later. As has been true with other Western states, the admission of Alaska to the Union in 1959 came with the seizure of large tracts of land by the Federal Government, one of which included his mine. He was never compensated.

Mr. Vogler stressed in his political debates that he believed the biggest problem with the federal government was that they have overstepped the bounds of the Constitution. Vogler challenged the federal government's practice of owning land in Alaska or any other state outside the original limits of the United States Constitution. Vogler believed that federal claims of land for preserves and parks is outside of the original intent of the framers of the Constitution and that the federal government has no right to own land in the western states except for "forts, arsenals, dockyards and other needful government uses. " [source]

In 1973, Joe Vogler began to press for Alaskan independence, having learned that the Statehood vote for Alaska was a violation of the rules of the United Nations. The United Nations requires that elections affecting the status of a territory include four options. Using American terminology, those options are Statehood, independence, commonwealth status (e.g., Puerto Rico), and to remain a territory.*** The election held for Statehood in August 1958 included only two options: Statehood or to remain a territory. In addition, United States military personnel who were not legally residents of Alaska were registered to vote in that election and urged to vote for Statehood; and ballots were issued only in English, not also in Inuit tribal languages, as required by the United Nations. Mr. Vogler wrote "Alaska and Statehood: A Factual Primer" in 1990 (cartoon at left is from that source), that explains the legal issues in greater detail. The same year, the AIP won the Gubernatorial election with Walter Hickel as its candidate.

In 1993, as reported by the Juneau Empire this March, Mr. Vogler

"and his miner friends took out full page ads in Anchorage newspapers comparing Alaska with Lithuania and the U.S. with the Soviet Union. He looked for a sponsor in order to speak before the U.N. General Assembly on Alaska independence. Iran was more than happy to oblige.

"Weeks before he was to fly to New York City, friends found his cabin empty on Memorial Day, 1993, his dogs unfed, his car parked in front, his wallet and heart medicine on the kitchen table, and the cage of his pet goose wrapped in a blanket.

"Joe Vogler's remains were found seventeen months later in a gravel pit outside of Fairbanks. A jury ruled Manfred West had killed Joe over the price of dynamite giving the part-time burglar an 80 year sentence for murdering 80 year old Joe. "

In the words of his (distant) cousin, Jeff Trigg:

"Speculation continues to this day, that the killer was set up to take the blame and that is was a government plot to keep Joe from that United Nations presentation for sovereignty. Yeah, it's conspiracy theory stuff, but it's also exactly how Joe predicted he would go."

We probably shall never know the whole truth about his death, but let there be no doubt that Joe Vogler was a martyr in the cause of freedom, whose name deserves to be remembered this weekend.

* I commend to you a book by Brig. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, War Is a Racket, which explains how American corporations profited from World War I (a war I never could understand in terms of the American national interest).

** There is a small bit of evidence to back a conspiracy theory suggesting that the motive for President Kennedy's assassination had to do with a plan to issue United States Notes, which would have represented a commitment to specie-based currency, and would have broken the Federal Reserve Bank.

*** The same violations occurred in Hawaii's election for statehood, and support that state's movements for independence.