Your Department of Homeland Security at Work: Conservative Causes Now "Rightwing Extremism" In Need of Vigilant Monitoring

Whoops: Gabe posted the main thing. Still, I like Frum's point.

A report titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," which seems to have been inspired by, or timed to coincide with, the the national tax-day tea party tomorrow.

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

The Obama Administration doesn't seem particularly cautious about defining an entire political party, representing somewhere between 46% and 52% of the country, as "rightwing extremist." While they take pains to understand the Iranian Mullahs, they seem to take no such pains understanding half the country.

Preferring instead to simply call them potential terrorists.

Gee, I wonder where these people are getting the idea that their liberties are in jeopardy.

Before David Frum goes over the rails with yet another attack on Glenn Beck, he makes some good points.

1) It's disturbing that an administration that is busily downgrading and euphemizing the threat from Islamic extremist terrorism (sorry: "man-made disasters" to use the now preferred term) would redirect its energies from a global threat to national security to a handful of creeps, weirdos, and malcontents skulking in the mountains.

2) On the evidence of the past decade, violence by maladjusted immigrants represents a much greater threat to innocent life than nativist violence against immigrants, as incidents like the Los Angeles Airport gun attack.
the Virginia Tech massacre, the Santa Clara mass family killing, the Binghamton NY rampage. and many others remind us.

3) After eight years of listening to Democrats complain about the Bush administration’s alleged exploitation of actual terrorism for political purposes, it is grimly ironic to see the Obama administration preparing to exploit hypothetical terrorism. In this, it is taking a leaf from the bad example of the Clinton administration, which cynically attempted to link congressional Republicans to the Oklahoma City bombing in its 1996 re-election strategy.

He pretty much takes those points back by saying "I'd like to say those things, but I can't, because Glenn Beck is a clear and present danger to the Constitution." Or words to that effect.

But I don't care what he might take back or not. They're good points.

Thanks to JackM. for the Frum-bait, and Instapundit for the link to Legal Insurrection.

Just Checking: Are the various black-masked anarchists who periodically shut down cities and throw heavy rocks at police "leftwing extremists"?

No?

Funny how the inconvenient members of the left are never included in the ranks of the left. They're just "nuts," apparently, without any general political sympathies towards one more-respectable branch of political thinking.

Unlike skinheads and survival fantasists, who are definitely "rightwing."

I'm Told... that Janet Reno issued a similar report soon after the Oklahoma City Bombing. If anyone finds that, please email it to me.

posted by Ace at 01:40 PM

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