It is fourteen minutes before six o'clock. The following is a KFGO editorial. The speaker is KFGO program manager, Bill Hoverson.

You are about to hear an original song. It's a song we at KFGO play for you with some regret, because in our opinion it is a vile song, a song of fractured logic and misguided emotional fervor. All we know of this song is that the recording arrived in our mail last Thursday morning in a plain, brown, manila envelope addressed to "News Director, KFGO Radio." The envelope was postmarked, "Fargo, North Dakota." There was no return address. Inside the envelope were two items: a reel-to-reel recording and a typed copy of the lyrics to the song. We don't know for sure, but we assume that the man who sings the song also wrote it. Whoever he is, he chooses not to reveal his name. The title of the song is "Freedom Fighter Gordon Kahl." A KFGO editorial will follow the song. Here it is in its entirety.

Sixty days before the deadline for the springtime sacrifice,
The plains of North Dakota witnessed fire on the ice.
U. S. marshals with a warrant, armed with everything but facts,
Came a-calling for a rebel who refused to pay his tax.
Prairie fog has chilled the trail, but it's known by one and all
Just what happens when you mess with Freedom Fighter Gordon Kahl.

When he saw his rights were shattered,
He knew deep inside it mattered,
And the choice was shoot or let them steal it all.
You'll be worthy of a statue by the time they ever catch you--
Keep on running for our freedom, Gordon Kahl!

Now for Gordon and his family things had gone from good to grief
Since they'd stood up to the taxman, making plain their deep belief
That a land conceived in freedom shouldn't try to charge us rent,
Let alone send out its marshals to assault the innocent.
It was over in a moment for those first unlucky two,
Red ink splattered on a snowbank when the Bill of Rights came due.

When you figure your l040, take a moment to rejoice;
There's a legend on the prairie of a man who made a choice.
His whole life is your deduction for the spirit of the time;
You can credit what is owed him just above the bottom line.
If your taxes come to zero, claim the writing on the wall--
Say a prayer for the preparer, Freedom Fighter Gordon Kahl!

Here's a message for you marshals and the thieves you represent:
You depend on guns and pigeons and the Sixteenth Amendment,
But rewards of fiat dollars only multiply your crimes--
Toll-free numbers can't be cheaper than your counterfeited dimes.
It's true some don't understand yet, but enough have had enough,
That your reign of fear is failing and the going's getting rough.

When he saw his rights were shattered,
He knew deep inside it mattered,
And the choice was shoot or let them steal it all.
You'll be worthy of a statue by the time they ever catch you--
Keep on running for our freedom, Gordon Kahl!
Keep on running for our freedom, Gordon Kahl!

That's it. That's a song called "Freedom Fighter Gordon Kahl," sung and written by person or persons unknown. You have heard it on KFGO because, in our opinion, you needed to hear it. There is, of course, the matter of natural curiosity. You've heard about this song, and you wanted to know what it really sounded like. Now you know. But in addition, this song serves as a focal point for KFGO to discuss something that has needed discussion for several weeks. And that is the appropriate public reaction to the events which propelled the name "Gordon Kahl" into our consciousness. In our opinion the public outcry which immediately followed news of a shootout in Medina, North Dakota, was entirely appropriate and remains appropriate today. Two U.S. marshals dead, one apparently shot execution-style at close range. Our feeling at the time was revulsion, as it should have been. There was a feeling of loss and compassion for the families of the victims, as there should have been.

And then the manhunt for fugitive Gordon Kahl began. Remember? We all gathered intently around our radios to hear the latest bulletins from a lonely farmhouse near Heaton, North Dakota. An army of law enforcement officials began their assault with tear gas canisters and armored personnel carriers. And when the smoke had cleared, the farmhouse was empty after all. We learned of a group of people calling themselves "Posse Comitatus," zealots trained in secret camps to forcibly resist taxation and government and God knows what else.

The next day a convoy in the fog to the small community of Ashley, North Dakota, and there a house-to-house search, and still no Gordon Kahl and no sign he'd ever been there. Suddenly our feelings of anger and frustration were overtaken by a new and curious sense of, yes, grudging admiration. Many of us secretly began rooting for the underdog, Gordon Kahl. Some of us more intently than others. To some extent we are all conditioned to cheer on the man who has beaten the odds, taken on armies single-handedly and outfoxed the sophistication of modern technology with native cunning. The establishment was defeated. One man had done it. We all identified with Gordon Kahl, if ever so discreetly. While we openly condemned the actions of Gordon Kahl and his accomplices as described to us by the U. S. Attorney, we nevertheless nervously giggled when a practical joker called a public eating place to have Gordon Kahl paged. And as we heard reports of sightings of Gordon Kahl in California, Texas, and Wisconsin, we listened to, laughed at, and repeated the new twist on the ET phenomenon, "Gordon Kahl home." It was a perfectly natural human reaction to something that reminded us all of a Charles Bronson movie.

Perhaps it was a twinge of guilt that predictably led some of us to begin seriously justifying our new, uncomfortable association with Gordon Kahl. His reported eighteen-page letter to a comrade in Posse Comitatus set forth an apology for actions that had resulted weeks earlier in death. Our thinking became, "This is no common criminal afoot on the North Dakota prairies, no." According to Gordon Kahl himself it was all the beginning of a justifiable uprising, a holy crusade, led and inspired by Jesus Christ himself. The ravings of a fanatic? Surely, but still there were a few things that made sense.

Taxation, after all, has been getting out of hand. Maybe Gordon Kahl and Posse Comitatus have something there. And the government itself loaded with godless men of less than honorable intentions. A national police force bent on the suppression of human liberty. Maybe it didn't seem right, but just maybe Gordon Kahl was a hero, not a criminal. Maybe they were out to get him and all he did was defend himself and his family. Maybe Gordon Kahl was a hero and maybe he didn't shoot first and maybe Kenneth Muir isn't really dead.

And now we hear Gordon Kahl's saga shaped by a nameless balladeer into the story of a freedom fighter. Now we have reached the point of decision. As one voice in a multitude of voices called "the public," will we sing the praises of Gordon Kahl, or will we cry out more loudly than ever for justice?

As a radio station, we at KFGO have made a decision. It is our feeling that you needed to hear this song in order to hear the danger. We have reached a dangerous point in time--yes, dangerous, physically dangerous to us all, if we allow this attitude of hero worship to go unchallenged; for to accept Gordon Kahl as a hero, or to sing the refrains of a new song called "Freedom Fighter Gordon Kahl," is to invite anarchy, armed men and women taking the law into their own hands, inspired wrongly by some prairie Paul Revere's vision of right versus might. It is a movement we must all resist, and we will resist it at KFGO by not playing this demented song except when accompanied by editorial comment. This song called "Freedom Fighter Gordon Kahl" would have us erect statues to Gordon Kahl. Instead we as a people should be anxious for the day near at hand when Gordon Kahl and his accomplices stand before a jury of twelve men and women who will determine in a court of law who shot first, who was truly at fault, and who should be held responsible for death on a road near Medina, North Dakota. This is the appropriate public reaction today and forever. If the verdict is "not guilty," so be it. Guilty or not guilty--a verdict. A simple verdict arrived at in a court of law will stand as a monument to the dedicated lives of U. S. Marshal Kenneth Muir, and Deputy U. S. Marshal Robert Cheshire, who so rightly deserve a monument.

The preceding has been a KFGO editorial. Any responsible individual seeking to respond to the content of the KFGO editorial should contact KFGO either by mail or in person within the next seven days. Your request for time to respond will be given due consideration, and should KFGO find your position to have merit, you will be offered an appropriate amount of time to respond. KFGO reserves the right to screen and select any or all requests for response. Again, the preceding has been a KFGO editorial.