And I think this is some sort of red line,
Something I have not experienced in my life,
When a government sends masked men with guns
Into ordinary towns to grab people off the streets
Under flimsy pretexts, the history books are fairly clear
About what this portends, and what it means.
My friend Pete, who is 93 and suffering dementia,
Loves to watch Gunsmoke and The Rifleman.
In those shows, when masked men with guns
Arrived in town, the lawmen usually stopped them.
But what if the law is on the side of the masked men?
And what if the townspeople are too afraid to stand up?
This is the plot of Nigh Noon. Gary Cooper is the lone man
Standing up against Frank Miller and his thugs.
And at the end, when the town is safe,
Gary Cooper casts his tin star into the dirt
And rides out of town. John Wayne complained
About High Noon, calling it “unamerican.”
And the director, Fred Zinneman, was blacklisted.
But I think, in this case, John Wayne was wrong,
Some of the “heroes’ of the old west were villains
And some had the courage to stand up to the masked thugs.
In Minnesota today, hundreds of thousands of Americans
Had the courage to stand up to the masked men,
The Frank Millers and Greg Bovinos of the world.
To see the masked men with guns for who they are.
And today, in 2026, the heroes are the ones
Who cast their tin stars into the dirt
And stand up, unafraid, free Americans, singing,
Tex Ritter’s “Do not forsake me, oh my darlin.”
