Home Grown Terrorists

The FBI has been in the news a lot this past year for its efforts in quashing the plans of would-be terrorists here in the US. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times had a a front-page article on one such successful arrest, but the suspect this time didn't actually fit the profile of those busted recently. This time the alleged perpetrator was a white conservative American with ties to a right-wing group.

But it wasn't Rice's alleged offense alone that prompted the FBI's interest.

According to court papers, Rice was involved in the "sovereign citizen" movement, a group that has attracted little national media attention but which the FBI classifies as an "extremist antigovernment group." So-called sovereign citizens argue that they are not subject to local, state or federal laws, and some refuse to recognize the authority of courts or police.

Since 2000, members of the movement have killed six police officers, and clashes with law enforcement are on the rise, according to the FBI. The deadliest incident came in 2010, when a shootout with a member left four people dead, including two police officers, during what began as a routine traffic stop in West Memphis, Ark. ...

In two recent unpublished studies, the Homeland Security Department and the National Counterterrorism Center ranked the sovereign citizen movement as a major threat, along with Islamic extremists and white supremacists. The FBI assigned a supervisor to coordinate investigations of the movement last year. ...

Until recently, federal officials had steered clear of any extensive focus on right-wing extremist groups. In 2009, some members of Congress complained after a Homeland Security Department report warned that such groups might seek to recruit disaffected military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as others. The report highlighted several groups, including the sovereign citizen movement.

Bowing to the criticism, Homeland Security officials gutted the office that had focused on right-wing extremism. They also canceled planned presentations and shelved a reference guide that the office had produced to inform local police about the movement. [Emphasis added]

Lives were lost because some Republicans were unhappy that some of their fringies were targeted and because the DHS caved into those complaints. Nice, eh?

I guess the GOP prefers that we only go after brown-skinned jihadis, those with unAmerican names.

For more information on the sovereign citizens movement, see the report prepared by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

That River In Egypt

We're into the third day of hashing over the details of the massacre in Arizona, and things are playing out pretty much the way we thought they would. Plenty of ink and electrons are being spilled by all sides of the complicated debate as to how and why this sort of thing happens. There's plenty of talk, very little of which contains any concrete proposals for minimizing the chances of it happening again. Perhaps it's too early in the process. Everyone is still in shock.

It clearly is not too early, however, for some mostly justified finger pointing:

Democratic members of Congress largely suggested that the shootings might have been sparked by increasingly bitter political rhetoric while Republicans described the suspected shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, as "unstable" and "deranged" without a clear link to politics.

Now, it seems to me that posing this causal argument as "either/or" is not particularly helpful. In fact, it is an oversimplification which moves the discourse away from analysis and towards the assigning of blame without any way to move forward. Yes, the rhetoric from Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, and Angle has clearly been dangerously over the top. And, yes, Jared Loughner gives every indication of being a profoundly "unstable" and "deranged" young man, the kind of individual vulnerable to such violent rhetoric, regardless of his political leanings.

But there is another element to the scenario: a gun. Loughner, who had been rejected by the Army when he tried to enlist, who had been suspended from Pima Community College for his behavior, who had a history of trying to start fights from at least his high school days, was able to purchase a Glock with extended magazines on November 30, just about 6 weeks before the massacre.

Of course, expecting anyone in Congress to consider the issue of easily obtainable firearms clearly not designed for hunting at this time in our history is like expecting to see a transaction tax imposed on Wall Street speculators. The GOP was swept to a majority in the House by the Tea Partiers who want less government control, not more, especially when it comes to their sanctified Second Amendment rights. The NRA continues to be one of the strongest forces in government, both in terms of lobbying and campaign contributions. Few, if any, congress critters want to step into that kind of battle.

So, even though some things beyond increasing Secret Service forces for our elected officials could be done, they won't be done, nor even considered. And we will have to face another horrific drama played out before our eyes, if not sooner by another deranged copycat gunman determined to finish what Mr. Loughner started, certainly later as our economy falters and the rhetoric escalates and another unstable, deranged soul strikes out.

Second Thoughts

I selected this article for my Sunday post before the tragic shooting in Tucson yesterday. I do my visit to Watching America early on Saturday because my Sundays are usually filled with chores. Ironically, the article from Austria's der Standard deals with the Tea Party, a loosely-knit segment of the American electorate which is being linked to the shooting because of its strong stand on the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms and because some of its chief proponents have pushed the limits of free speech far beyond the usual definition of civil discourse.

Here is the segment I wanted to highlight before the news of the shooting:

Many of the newly elected House Republicans are tea partiers, and they will need time to get acclimatized and to learn the ropes of how Washington operates. There’s obviously a danger that the tea partiers will have to play games in order to accomplish anything. But at the same time, they can’t afford to follow a course of fundamental opposition, because that doesn’t go over with voters. The American political system is set up in such a way that they have to accomplish things for the voters; otherwise, they won’t get re-elected. The tea party candidates will be held to that same standard. Beyond that, the movement is highly splintered in regard to their goals. Some are social conservatives opposed to abortion and fetal research, while others are fiscal conservatives who don’t want big government. [Emphasis added]

My point was going to be that the Tea Partiers were going to learn the lessons liberals are still learning that once in Washington most candidates forget who got them there. The new congress critters need to make their bones not with their constituents but with those who will finance the next election. Oh, they will blow a few kisses to the people back home: they'll read the Constitution before proceeding, they'll issue sound bites about cutting programs which benefit the lazy unemployed, and then they'll pass bills to benefit their donors.

That said, I can't help thinking about Gabriella Giffords and Federal Judge John Roll and the other victims of the shooter who took out at least 18 people (six dead, of whom one was a child, as of 5:00 PM, PST). The shooting took place at a "town hall meeting" the congresswoman had set up. The accused shooter went there, apparently deliberately, to dispense his brand of justice.

Why the link to the Tea Party?

Well, Sarah Palin, the GrandMama of the Tea Party, had targeted Congresswoman Giffords as one who needed to be defeated in the 2010 elections. Palin used a graphic appropriate to the concept of "target": a rifle-sight cross-hairs across a picture of Giffords, a graphic since removed from her Facebook page.

Now, at least at this point, there is no definitive link between the shooter and the Tea Party. He looks to be a seriously deranged young man. But the rhetoric of such as Palin and Glenn Beck, laden as it has been with the language of violence ("Don't retreat, reload") could very well have given the shooter the impetus, the permission he needed to act out his fantasy.

As much as I loathe the corporate interests which created the Tea Party movement, I doubt that the members of that movement had in mind the kind of literal violence that the rhetoric has spawned. But the violence has occurred. People are dead and maimed. And I fear that the violence will continue. Guns are that easy to get.

I also know that the mainstream media will downplay any connection between the right wing rhetoric and the deaths that occurred January 8, 2011, that the shooter will be seen as another Lee Harvey Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan or James Earl Ray: crazy, and therefor irrelevant.

And I fear that the noble experiment known as the United States will end dismally.

Kyrie Eleison

Christian Terrorists

I was a youngster when I first heard "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice," and I thought that was about the coolest thing I had ever heard. I was so moved by the phrase that I promptly marched down to the local Republican Party headquarters and volunteered. My assigned task was not to pass out campaign literature at grocery stores, or to take part in phone banking. I was considered too young for such important jobs. My job was to read all of the Milwaukee Sentinel and the Milwaukee Journal and to clip articles that I considered would be useful to the party and its candidates.

I guess I've come full circle. I don't often read the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (yes, the two papers merged so the city now has one daily), but I surely read a lot of newspapers, collecting articles that intrigue, infuriate, or enlighten me. Yesterday I came across one that fell into the last category, a commentary written by Leonard Pitts Jr of the Miami Herald and reprinted in McClatchy DC. He makes some powerful statements on the kind of extremism we're witnessing right now.

A few words about Christian terrorism.

And I suppose the first words should be about those words: "Christian terrorism." The term will seem jarring to those who've grown comfortable regarding terrorism as something exclusive to Islam.

That this is a self-deluding fallacy should have long since been apparent to anyone who's been paying attention. From Eric Rudolph's bombing of the Atlanta Olympics, a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics to the so-called Phineas Priests who bombed banks, a newspaper and a Planned Parenthood office in Spokane, from Matt Hale soliciting the murder of a federal judge in Chicago to Scott Roeder's assassination of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, from brothers Matthew and Tyler Williams murdering a gay couple near Redding, Calif., to Timothy McVeigh destroying a federal building and 168 lives in Oklahoma City, we have seen no shortage of "Christians" who believe Jesus requires — or at least allows — them to commit murder.

If federal officials are correct, we now have one more name to add to the dishonor roll. That name would be Hutaree, a self-styled Christian militia in Michigan, nine members of which have been arrested and accused of plotting to kill police officers in hopes of sparking an anti-government uprising.

Many of us would doubtless resist referring to plots like this as Christian terrorism, feeling it unfair to tar the great body of Christendom with the actions of its fringe radicals. And here, we will pause for Muslim readers to loudly clear their throats

...

Why does their Jesus need the help of men in camo fatigues with guns and bombs? In this, he is much like the Allah for whom certain Muslims blow up marketplaces and crowded buses. Muslim and American terrorists, it seems, both apparently serve a puny and impotent God who can't do anything without their help.

It saddens me that we have come to the point where the man who said "Even as you do unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me", who blessed the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, is used as justification for murder. It grieves me that the term "Christian terrorism" is not an oxymoron. It disgusts me that those who claim to adhere to the Gospels urge their co-religionists not to retreat but to reload.

Mr. Pitts (whom I will henceforth refer to as "Our man, Mr. Pitts") has nailed this dangerous lunacy brilliantly, naming it for what it is. And for that I am grateful.

Holy Hutaree

I am fully aware that Watching America is a "liberal" site, and that the news articles featured are selected from that point of view. However, I don't think that the bias of the site lessens its usefulness. After all, the articles themselves weren't written by the good people at Watching America but by journalists in other countries.

One of the things that struck me during yesterday's visit to the site was the awareness of other countries concerning the increased visibility of far-right militia groups in the US. A cluster of articles (interestingly, all from German newspapers) explored this phenomenon. There were two from Germany's Frankfurter Rundschau, here and here; one from that country's die Zeit, here; and one from Süddeutsche Zeitung, here. It is this last article which intrigued me the most because of the detail with which this peculiarly American phenomenon was explored.

Here's a sample of what I mean:

Hutaree’s homepage openly presents the group’s beliefs and its goal of establishing a new world order. They display their flag and crest and give an insight into their organizational structure; they say they hope to “reach out to those who have not the word of God and those who are lost in there (sic) ideas of Christ.” ...

Above everything stands the motto "Preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive." The paramilitary group adheres to a doctrine larded with biblical references; there’s hardly a sentence on the website that doesn’t contain the word Christian or the name Jesus. But their conspiracy theories have nothing to do with Christian virtues: “We believe that one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ.” And the duty of combating him and driving him out falls to the Hutaree. ...

The Hutaree militia is only one of many right-wing extremist militant groups in the United States; the civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center lists 127 other groups. Most of them claim to be defenders of the American heritage intended by the founding fathers that, according to their crude perceptions, means white Christians fighting against immorality, blacks, leftists, liberals, Muslims, the American government and the rest of the world. [Emphasis added]

Clearly this is an opinion piece, but it is one which presents an accurate portrait of the group allegedly planning actions which would kick off a civil war. It is also one that doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the reasons for the emergence of the Hutarees and other groups like it:

The pious Sarah Palin recently spread more of her anti-Obama health care reform poison and showed just how close she was to opening fire when she wrote to her fans on Facebook saying, "Commonsense conservatives & lovers of America: 'don't retreat, instead ⎯ RELOAD!'"

It was advice apparently taken to heart by the Hutaree folks.

While I don't think Sarah Palin and her penchant for violent rhetoric is the only person enabling the militia groups (think Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, even some members of Congress anxious to get on board with the Tea Party), I do think her emergence as the darling of farthest of the far right combined with the platform she has been handed by Fox News Network and the heightened activities of such groups as the Hutaree are connected, and not just tangentially.

Elements of the German press obviously think the US is in for a wild ride.

So do I.

Civil Discourse: Part 2

On Thursday I commented on the delicate position the Republicans found themselves in, having to keep their fringes fired up enough to vote in November but not so fired up that the rest of the country turned away in disgust. I was too kind insofar as I believed that no political party would actually stoop to racist hatred to get elected in these more enlightened times. I obviously still haven't stamped out my naivete.

Derrick Z. Jackson, a columnist for the Boston Globe, has convinced me that not only am I naive, but also that I was just wrong in giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt as he examines the fallout from the health care reform votes. Here's some of what he had to say in his latest offering titled "Hatred as a Political Strategy":

It was Armageddon all right, a battle between selfishness and sharing. Some Americans who believe health care reform represents a heist of “their’’ resources for the undeserving betrayed their underlying feelings as Democratic congressmen were either called the N word or spat upon, a Latino congressman was called a “wetback,’’ and Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, who is gay, was called the F word.

No Republican had the courage to remind the rabid that America, at other great crossroads, did put government into their lives. The wealth of countless white middle class families today stems from World War II veteran housing bills that too often, we conveniently forget, discriminated against black veterans along with housing segregation. Surely, more than one tea partier has Medicare or uses a VA hospital. Yet most Republicans do anything they can to deflect responsibility for the frenzy. ...

One cannot forget how, in a last gasp before Obama’s election, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said of Obama, “I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America as you and I do.’’ One cannot forget the level of disrespect shown to Obama in the “You lie!’’ outburst by South Carolina Republican Representative Joe Wilson. Wilson has been rewarded for his outburst with the most campaign contributions of anyone in the House, $3.4 million in the 2010 election cycle.

In the final stages of the health care debate, Palin and other Republican leaders resorted to telling their masses to “reload’’ or get ready for the “firing line’’ in November. Republican Congressman Randy Neugebauer had to apologize for shouting “baby killer’’ when anti-abortion Democrat Bart Stupak of Michigan gave his support for the health care bill. The Republicans need to find someone with courage to disarm the rhetoric, before someone reloads for real. [Emphasis added]

When Republican members of Congress and former candidates themselves engage in the violent rhetoric, thereby validating what stands behind the rhetoric (a racist call to action against those who aren't "true-blue Americans"), and then turn around and blame the Democrats for inciting the acts of violence as Newt Gingrich did, then that party is doing more than just patting the tightie-rightie outliers on the head. It is calling for internecine war, the shooting kind.

I don't think a second civil war will have any winners. Instead, the nation will be irretrievably shattered and the Great Experiment will have failed.

Heckuva job, GOP.

Civil Discourse

Apparently elections only matter when Republicans win. That seems to be the message once again, as the GOP continues their weird attempt to derail the half vast health care reform bill by offering such crucial amendments as one which forbids the provision of Viagra to rapists. The Senate Republicans, however, are at least using tactics allowed in the Senate rules. Some of their fellow travelers, however, have dispensed with the niceties of civil discourse, choosing instead the discourse of violent threats and action.

At least two Congressional district offices were vandalized and Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a senior Democrat from New York, received a phone message threatening sniper attacks against lawmakers and their families.

Ms. Slaughter also reported that a brick was thrown through a window of her office in Niagara Falls, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, said Monday that her Tucson office was vandalized after the vote.

The Associated Press reported that the authorities in Virginia were investigating a cut propane line to an outdoor grill at the home of a brother of Representative Tom Perriello of Virginia, after the address was mistakenly listed on a Tea Party Web site as the residence of the congressman. Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan and a central figure in the measure’s abortion provisions, reported receiving threatening phone calls.

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking black lawmaker in the House, said he received an anonymous fax showing the image of a noose.

To be fair, some congressional Republicans have condemned the violence and violent threats, but not without urging their surrogates to save the anger for the ballot box come November. To underscore the point they even have a graphic of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surrounded by fire on an official web site, justifying the violent image by stating the graphic represents merely the desire to "fire" the Speaker. Real helpful, that.

Republicans find themselves in the position of wanting to keep the fringes angry and active enough to come out and vote in November, but not so outrageous as to frighten and disgust the rest of the faithful away from making the donations and the efforts they need if they are going to garner enough seats to return to power. They will have a tough time in the containment of that energy, however. The fringes aren't listening to them, they're listening to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, the real leaders of the Party right now.

If the situation weren't so dangerous and so corrosive, I would sit back and enjoy the show. But it is, and I can't.

Domestic Terrorism

Once again I had to go to a foreign newspaper to get information on this country. This time the article is from England's The Guardian. The article is a summary of a report on right wing extremist groups prepared by the Southern Poverty Law Center, so I went to the primary source.

The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation.

Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called "Patriot" groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight.

The anger seething across the American political landscape — over racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama Administration that are seen as "socialist" or even "fascist" — goes beyond the radical right. The "tea parties" and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism. [Emphasis added]

I suppose there are several reasons why I didn't see much on this latest report from SPLC. First, the growth of these groups detailed in the report isn't exactly breaking news. We've seen still photos and videos of the "patriotic groups" on the front pages and across the internet, nearly all of which show men (mostly) proudly wearing their sidearms or hoisting rifles and shotguns. No paper of record or television news site, however, mention the increase in potential for violence by the numbers. That's why the SPLC report is so useful.

Second, and even more revealing, is the fact that at least one news group, Fox, has been openly promoting the Tea Partiers and their events. While I agree that tagging the Tea Party with the label "extremist" is unfair, many of their ideas and ideals come from extremist rhetoric:

As the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in the ostensible mainstream. While in the 1990s, the movement got good reviews from a few lawmakers and talk-radio hosts, some of its central ideas today are being plugged by people with far larger audiences like FOX News’ Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn). Beck, for instance, re-popularized a key Patriot conspiracy theory — the charge that FEMA is secretly running concentration camps — before finally “debunking” it.

Last year also experienced levels of cross-pollination between different sectors of the radical right not seen in years. Nativist activists increasingly adopted the ideas of the Patriots; racist rants against Obama and others coursed through the Patriot movement; and conspiracy theories involving the government appeared in all kinds of right-wing venues. A good example is the upcoming Second Amendment March in Washington, D.C. The website promoting the march is topped by a picture of a colonial militiaman, and key supporters include Larry Pratt, a long-time militia enthusiast with connections to white supremacists, and Richard Mack, a conspiracy-mongering former sheriff associated with the Patriot group Oath Keepers. [Emphasis added]

I don't know which disturbs me more: the fact that these groups are on the rise and cooperating with each other, or the fact that we have lost an objective media which would inform the public on just what is happening in this country.

I do know this, however: we are in for some dangerous times.

An Increased Work Load

It came as no surprise to me that the Secret Service has its hands full. I fully expected that, and not just because a black man was elected president. I suspect that any Democrat elected to the White House would have faced an increase in threats, but it's clear that Barack Obama as the first black president has really shaken more than a few cages. This article in the Boston Globe confirms that assessment and provided me with some information I didn't know about the Secret Service.

The unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama, a rise in racist hate groups, and a new wave of antigovernment fervor threaten to overwhelm the US Secret Service, according to government officials and reports, raising new questions about the 144-year-old agency’s overall mission.

The Secret Service is tracking a far broader range of possible threats to the nation’s leaders, the officials said, even as it also investigates financial crimes such as counterfeiting as part of its original mandate.

The new demands are leading some officials, both inside and outside the agency, to raise the possibility of the service curtailing or dropping its role in fighting financial crime to focus more on protecting leaders and their families from assassination attempts and thwarting terrorist plots aimed at high-profile events.

I did not know that the Secret Service was charged with the task of financial crime investigation, primarily counterfeiting, although I did know that it was responsible for the security of visiting foreign dignitaries and for certain political events (e.g., national political conventions).

What really interested me, however, was the fact that the Globe, which I consider a really fine newspaper, if not a national newspaper, thought fit to publish the article and to emphasize the increasing threat of domestic terrorists.

As I mentioned yesterday and last Sunday, the extremist militias are once again on the rise, aided and abetted by members of the GOP, hate-talk media buffoons, and even the "reputable" press. They are becoming bolder because no one has effectively called them out. When the Department of Homeland Security issued its report on the danger of such groups, the GOP got its collective knickers in a twist and screamed in outrage. DHS promptly apologized and withdrew the report.

As a result, the Secret Service is now working double time to keep up with the problem, and doing it with inadequate funding for such things as a decent computer system.

The Service currently protects 32 people - 24 full time and eight part time. It also coordinates security at high-profile events, such as meetings of world leaders and political party conventions. Between Oct. 1, 2008, and Sept. 30, the Secret Service said it protected 116 heads of state and 58 spouses.

“The service’s protection mission has increased and become more urgent, due to the increase in terrorist threats and expanded arsenal of weapons that terrorists could use in an assassination attempt or attacks on facilities,’’ according to the congressional report.

Now, the thrust of the Globe article was the decision facing Congress as to whether it will be necessary to split off the Secret Service's other tasks and to transfer those duties to the Treasury Department, but it did a very creditable job in explaining why the security detail had become so very important right now. It even referred to this Southern Poverty Law Center report in great detail (but didn't link to it...which is one thing that disappointed me in the article, especially since I read the electronic version where it would have been easy to insert the link).

At some point, and hopefully very soon, something concrete has to be done with respect to the threat that these groups pose. Freedom of Speech (while not absolute) is one thing. Packing guns to a presidential speech and to congressional town hall meetings is something else, as are training exercises with more deadly weapons. Furthermore, encouraging and inciting violence is not protected speech, something that Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Lou Dobbs have to learn.

The Boston Globe did its job today. For that I am grateful.

What Others See: The Right Fist Of Fury

Watching America is still filled with the international response to President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. I guess the rest of the world was just as flummoxed as we were by the surprising announcement. Not everyone was critical, or disgusted. In fact, many of the world's press saw the selection as an expression of hope: both for President Obama and for America.

One article, however, provided another view of America, although that view was not colored by the Nobel Prize issue. It examined the re-emergence of one of the more frightening aspects of this country. From Belgium's Le Soir (as translated by Watching America):

The violence of the attacks thrown by the extreme right at Barack Obama has assumed a hallucinatory dimension. These harsh faces, those threatening fists, those brandished placards recall the incendiary sermons of the national Catholic and anti-Semitic priest Charles Coughlin against President Roosevelt at the end of the 1930s, the heinous hunting of racists by some "riders of liberty" in the deep South in the 1950s, the hysterical attacks against John and Robert Kennedy and those who stood behind Martin Luther King for the civil rights of blacks.

In the image of Léon Degrelle, who pretended to represent the "real country" and French Action by crying out against the "Jew Léon Blum," the American far right presents itself as the "Real America," and diminishes its opponents as invaders or infiltrators. Declaring itself "pure wool," white and Christian, it drapes itself in the national banner and excommunicates those who are different. And it is all the more triggered by hate. However, the scope of the attacks targeting Barack Obama no longer reveals simply democratic uproar, but rather a call for murder. ...

The euphoria that won international opinion after the Democratic victory last November has almost made us forget that the part of America that was stubbornly opposed to Obama hasn't been won over; that it was always there, furious, aggressive, venomous and incapable of accepting defeat. [Emphasis added]

Jean-Paul Marthoz, the gentleman who wrote this opinion piece, has provided a solid analysis of just what is behind the fury, aggression, and venom of the extreme right. He also point out why not just Americans should be troubled by those too many of us dismiss as a few whackos:

This rancorous America is in the minority, but it is far from marginal because it is anchored in the heart of the Republican party, which is put under pressure by its own extremists. Moreover, some of its most disjointed arguments take advantage of a thundering media intermediary, not only in the wild, wild west of the internet, but also in the notable television channel that thinks of itself as respectable, like Fox News. [Emphasis added]

By refusing to openly reject the positions and threats of the extreme right, the Republican Party has given those on its extremist fringe a right to claim legitimacy, a claim that is bolstered by those enablers in the media who seem intent to egg them on. And that allows existing groups to increase the violent rhetoric and to recruit new members with impunity.

Last Sunday, I posted on one such group, the Oath Keepers, based on an article I read in the Los Angeles Times which seemed intent to show that the group was composed of just "regular folks" who were a little concerned about the direction the country was taking. That bit of puffery mentioned the ten part oath taken by members, but never bothered to link to the group's web site which explicitly unpacks that oath in frightening fashion. How's that for free advertising for a militia group?

In my post I linked to a report prepared by the Southern Poverty Law Center on the reappearance of the militia movement. Since the report didn't get the kind of attention the Oath Keepers got, I recommend you go read it and the accompanying reports to get a fuller picture of just what is happening. Here's a taste:

They're back. Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country. "Paper terrorism" — the use of property liens and citizens' "courts" to harass enemies — is on the rise. And once-popular militia conspiracy theories are making the rounds again, this time accompanied by nativist theories about secret Mexican plans to "reconquer" the American Southwest. One law enforcement agency has found 50 new militia training groups — one of them made up of present and former police officers and soldiers. Authorities around the country are reporting a worrying uptick in Patriot activities and propaganda. "This is the most significant growth we've seen in 10 to 12 years," says one. "All it's lacking is a spark. I think it's only a matter of time before you see threats and violence."

Just a spark.

Mr. Marthoz is right to be worried. We all should be.

A 'Sacred' Oath

About a month ago, the Los Angeles Times published an article on one of the newest militia groups, the Oath Keepers. I was offended by the article because it was clearly written to show that at least one of the group's leaders, Rand Cardwell, was no foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing nut, but rather just a "regular guy," one who had been recently laid off and whose wife was having a re-occurrence of lung cancer. A Marine, he claimed that he was no racist and that he had proudly served alongside African Americans during his tour as a Marine. He just didn't like what he was seeing happening to his country.

"Our goal," he said, "is to support and defend the Constitution, and that's where it begins and ends at. . . . We're not a hate group. We're not a racist group. We're not calling for armed revolt against the government." ...

He says his opposition is rooted in deeply American values -- the same ones Obama acknowledged in his recent speech to Congress, when he noted "our rugged individualism, our fierce defense of freedom and our healthy skepticism of government."

But as Cardwell watched federal power grow -- first under President George W. Bush -- that healthy skepticism has led him to conclude that now is the time to sound an alarm. ...

His concerns began massing toward the end of the Bush administration. There was warrantless wiretapping, the Patriot Act, and the 2005 Real ID Act -- the proposed law, currently in administrative limbo, that would establish national standards for driver's licenses.

But it was the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the multibillion-dollar bailout of the financial system launched under Bush in autumn 2008, that compelled him to act. Cardwell feared TARP would give government unprecedented sway over private sector companies.

"That was the spike going into my forehead," he said. "Because our nation was already in huge debt. The fact that you've got the federal government that's going to take our tax dollars and give them to financial institutions violates the very principles our nation was founded on."

I wondered when I first read the article (and continue to wonder today) just where Mr. Cardwell's concern was in the early days of the Bush administration, when the Patriot Act was rammed through and when the news of warrantless wire-tapping and email searches surfaced. Where was he when it became clear that the nation was lied into a war that had no rationale beyond the desire to corner the oil market? A lot of his comrades in the Marine Corps died and are dying because of that little extra-constitutional move. Why did he wait until the TARP vote (which, by the way, came after the November, 2008 elections) to voice his displeasure? And why did he think this latest iteration of the Patriot movement of the 1990s was for him?

The Oath Keepers is an interesting groups for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that they have a specific target audience: the military and public safety personnel, active and inactive, although all those sympathetic to the movement are welcome. The target audience is reminded that they have taken an oath to defend the Constitution and not the government, and members are asked to sign on to a list of promises in support of that oath.

I went to the organization's website to find the list of those promises. I'm just listing the promises here, but if you want to see the rationale for each one, click on over.

1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.

2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people

3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.

4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.

5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.

10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

Clearly some of these promises are just loopy, based on the delusional ravings of the Becks and Dobbs of the "mainstream" media. Some, on their face, are just cut and pasted from the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. The real tell, however, is the first promise, the one about disarming the public. The fact that keeping guns of all sorts, from S&W Model 41s for plinking to assault weapons and grenade launchers in the hands of everyone, especially those members who have been trained in their use is on top the list is chilling.

What is especially troubling is that the Oath Keepers is just one group among many militia style organizations which have resurfaced and which are gaining ground among a significant segment of the population. The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented this rise in a report available on their website. I urge you to go read it. Here's what the SPLC had to say about the resurgence:

Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country. "Paper terrorism" — the use of property liens and citizens' "courts" to harass enemies — is on the rise. And once-popular militia conspiracy theories are making the rounds again, this time accompanied by nativist theories about secret Mexican plans to "reconquer" the American Southwest. One law enforcement agency has found 50 new militia training groups — one of them made up of present and former police officers and soldiers. Authorities around the country are reporting a worrying uptick in Patriot activities and propaganda. "This is the most significant growth we've seen in 10 to 12 years," says one. "All it's lacking is a spark. I think it's only a matter of time before you see threats and violence."

A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man. That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate. One result has been a remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama. At the same time, ostensibly mainstream politicians and media pundits have helped to spread Patriot and related propaganda, from conspiracy theories about a secret network of U.S. concentration camps to wholly unsubstantiated claims about the president's country of birth. [Emphasis added]

So that's why I deplore the Los Angeles Times's puff piece. While I agree that demonizing those who hold beliefs different than mine is unhealthy and unhelpful, granting those whose beliefs are dangerous to the entire nation the camouflage of "regular folks" is unconscionable. I have a great respect for all aspects of the creation. I like snakes. I would never, however, invite a rattler into my apartment to share food and water. The Times did us a great disservice by this one-sided, dishonest article. By its standard, the Times would have made Timothy McVeigh an Eagle Scout. Once again, our media has let us down.

Ratwang-Dango

Yesterday I posted on Neal Gabler's excellent essay on how the conservatives have turned from being a political party to being a fundamentalist religion. He asserted that part of the reasons for the success of this movement was the pusillanimous press: "The media have certainly been cowed; they treat intolerance as if it were legitimate political activity."

In a bit of serendipity, I came across the same theme in a recent "Comment Is Free" column in the The Guardian (UK) written by Dan Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy referred back to the interview David Gregory did of former President Bill Clinton last Sunday in which he asked whether Mr. Clinton believed the "vast right wing conspiracy" his wife alluded to during the days of the Monica Lewinski scandal was still in operation. The former president stated that it was, and that it was just as virulent. And it is at this point that Mr. Kennedy takes off.

Clinton was right, of course. From birthers to teabaggers, from talkshow host Glenn Beck's denouncing Barack Obama's alleged "deep-seated hatred for white people" to Confederacy-worshipping congressman Joe Wilson's yelling "You lie!" at the president, it's clear that the extreme right is as irrational and vocal as it was in the 1990s. And now, more than ever, the extremists are virtually indistinguishable from the mainstream of the Republican party.

But another, equally toxic element has carried over from the 90s – an element that Gregory, not surprisingly, failed to bring up and that Clinton was too polite to mention. It is simply this: Major elements of the media, terrified of accusations that they're in the tank with Democrats and liberals, would rather deny reality than tell the simple truth. This abject spinelessness is a significant factor in how the lies of the right infect public discourse. ...

In hyping overblown rightwing claims, the media have reverted to form. The way it worked then, and the way it works now, is that nominally liberal journalists are intimidated into giving equal and oftentimes unquestioning coverage to the right in order to prove how fair and unbiased they are. The result: absurd stories such as Travelgate, Whitewater and the virtual wilding to which Al Gore was subjected in 2000.

The trouble these days is that one of our two major parties has run entirely off the rails. And our media system, dependent as it is on false notions of objectivity, rarely acknowledges it. [Emphasis added]

That states it quite nicely. While I would argue that more than cowardice is involved, that the corporations which own the major media outlets are perfectly happy to catapult the propaganda because it suits their quarterly bottom lines, the effect is the same. Truth is watered down to fit the meme of the day, the outlines of the blastfax, the replacement for "if it bleeds, it leads."

One of the major checks on the excesses of government and on political action in this country has traditionally been a free press which assiduously roots out the truth. That check, which the founders considered invaluable enough to include in the Bill of Rights, has been squandered, bounced (if you will) in favor of a bizarre game of "he said/she said" when what he said is so patently false that equating it a response that is grounded in truth is so irrational as to be worthy only of a seat at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. That is what we are left with in the opening of the 21st Century.

Most of the time I regret that I'm growing old because I have so much enjoyed living in such privileged circumstances. Right now, however, I am grateful. I won't have to see, close up and personal, just where this will lead. For those of my younger friends and family who don't have the luxury of age I would simply advise that you get off your couches and demand better. Because if you don't, you will find yourself in a fundamentalist country that cuts off hands for stealing your daily bread. And your daily newspaper will be facilitating that shift.

Wingers Getting It Wrong For the Kids

Our founding fathers would be dismayed at many things that the wingers have done to their concept of independence, but teaching that God made them do it would not pass muster. These intellectuals who were dismissive of the fundamentalist teachings of colonial days were not about to carry water for any church. Now present day fundies - who want their church to tell you what your body ought to be required to do - are trying to teach your children their own version of history.

That the enemies of our country envy our freedoms is actually true among these screwy revisionists.

The Christian right is making a fresh push to force religion onto the school curriculum in Texas with the state's education board about to consider recommendations that children be taught that there would be no United States if it had not been for God.

Members of a panel of experts appointed by the board to revise the state's history curriculum, who include a Christian fundamentalist preacher who says he is fighting a war for America's moral soul, want lessons to emphasise the part played by Christianity in the founding of the US and that religion is a civic virtue.

Opponents have decried the move as an attempt to insert religious teachings in to the classroom by stealth, similar to the Christian right's partially successful attempt to limit the teaching of evolution in biology lessons in Texas.

One of the panel, David Barton, founder of a Christian heritage group called WallBuilders, argues that the curriculum should reflect the fact that the US Constitution was written with God in mind including that "there is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature", that "there is a creator" and "government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual".

Barton says children should be taught that Christianity is the key to "American exceptionalism" because the structure of its democratic system is a recognition that human beings are fallible, and that religion is at the heart of being a virtuous citizen.

Another of the experts is Reverend Peter Marshall, who heads his own Christian ministry and preaches that Hurricane Katrina and defeat in the Vietnam war were God's punishment for sexual promiscuity and tolerance of homosexuals. Marshall recommended that children be taught about the "motivational role" of the Bible and Christianity in establishing the original colonies that later became the US.
(snip)
Social studies teachers will meet shortly to consider the panel's views and make their own recommendations to the board of education which has the final say. The board is dominated by conservatives who appointed Barton and Marshall to the panel.

These revisionists ought to be given no say at all in school curriculum. It's doubtful that most churches would allow such drivel to be taught in their bible schools and most parents I know would snatch their children out of any school where such nonsense was taught.

The right wing has been working its way into posts of responsibility to spread their poison, and our negligence of our own citizenship has allowed it to happen by not being involved in our own government locally. I'm guilty, too, since I found out that wingnuts had sought and gotten positions in our city government several years back but thought they'd learn something which might be to everyone's good.

Nothing positive happens when the ignorant get into positions of authority. In Dallas, the Health Department has been allowed once again to distribute condoms - after prohibiting the practice resulted in increased occurrences of HIV, and unwanted pregnancies.

Our founding fathers were men of amazing intellect, and despoiling the great country we've been fortunate to inherit is not to be allowed. Separation of church and state may not be written into the constitution, but our freedoms are spelled out quite definitively, even when it did take many years to extend them to most of our citizens.

We need to protect this country from those who want to deprive us of our freedom. Our children are at risk once again, in Texas.

MADness

Home invasion robberies are among the more violent of crimes committed in this country. When such crimes are coupled with an extremist political agenda, the crime is somehow even more horrifying, as the people of Arivaca, Arizona discovered May 30 when such an invasion resulted in the murder of a father and his ten year old daughter and the wounding of his wife. From the NY Times:

The killings, last month, have terrified this small town near the Mexican border, in part because the authorities have now tied them to what they describe as a rogue group engaged in citizen border patrols.

The three people arrested in the crime include the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a Washington State-based offshoot of the Minutemen movement, in which citizens roam the border looking for people crossing into the country illegally. Former members describe the group’s leader, Shawna Forde, 41, as having anti-immigrant sentiments that are extreme, at times frightening, even to people accustomed to hard-line views on border policing.

The authorities say that the three suspects were after money and drugs that they intended to use to finance vigilantism, and that members of the group may have been involved in at least one other home invasion, in California. [Emphasis added]

The acronym for this group certainly fits, especially given the tactics adopted by Ms Forde and her cohort. Just how crazy these people are was underscored by some of the people who quickly grew disenchanted with the group, among them Ms. Forde's half-brother.

Merrill Metzger, who worked for the group for six months just as it was getting started in 2007, said Ms. Forde had often traveled from Washington to Arizona with weapons. In March, while stopping over at his home in Redding, Calif., she presented a plan for the group to undertake, Mr. Metzger, her half-brother, said in a telephone interview.

“She was sitting here talking about how she was going to start an underground militia and rob drug dealers,” he said.

Mr. Metzger quit the group, alarmed, he said, by a number of things, including Ms. Forde’s demand for extreme loyalty, right down to the choice of cuisine.

“I had to take an oath, and part of the oath was that I couldn’t eat Mexican food,” he said. “That’s when red flags went up all over for me. That seemed like prejudice.”

"Seemed like prejudice." You think?

The DHS report about the threat to the nation from right wing terrorists doesn't look so bad anymore. In fact, Republican caviling aside, it looks to have been right on the money. I'll be interested to hear Tom Tancredo's and Lou Dobbs's response to this story, although I won't hold my breath that either man will even mention it.