Top House Democrat Dumbfounded By Report On 'Right-Wing Extremism'

Fascism, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism

By now most of you will have heard that, as the Washington Times divulged, the Department of Homeland Security, headed by Janet Napolitano, “issued April 7 a nine-page document titled ‘Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.'”

Rightwing extremism,” the report said in a footnote on Page 2, goes beyond religious and racial hate groups and extends to “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,” said the report, which also listed gun owners and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as potential risks.

To one Democrat’s credit, he protested. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top House Democrat with oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, demanded that “Homeland Security officials explain how and why they wrote the report and whether it poses any threat to civil liberties.”

“As I am certain you agree, freedom of association and freedom of speech are guaranteed to all Americans – whether a person’s beliefs, whatever their political orientation, are ‘extremist’ or not,” Mr. Thompson said.

Everyone is up in arms about the libel this is to army men. What about to immigration patriots? Second Amendment defenders? Limited government crusaders? Tax protesters?

Every time, someone cries “the children; we’re saddling our children with debt, ” I cringe. F-ck the children. What about We the Workings Stiffs? I’m beginning to feel the same about “our men and women in the military” mantra. The military is not more deserving than the rest of us.

One more thing: The report was commissioned during the administration of President George W. Bush and completed by his worthy successor.

Top House Democrat Dumbfounded By Report On ‘Right-Wing Extremism’

Fascism, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism

By now most of you will have heard that, as the Washington Times divulged, the Department of Homeland Security, headed by Janet Napolitano, “issued April 7 a nine-page document titled ‘Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.'”

Rightwing extremism,” the report said in a footnote on Page 2, goes beyond religious and racial hate groups and extends to “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,” said the report, which also listed gun owners and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as potential risks.

To one Democrat’s credit, he protested. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top House Democrat with oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, demanded that “Homeland Security officials explain how and why they wrote the report and whether it poses any threat to civil liberties.”

“As I am certain you agree, freedom of association and freedom of speech are guaranteed to all Americans – whether a person’s beliefs, whatever their political orientation, are ‘extremist’ or not,” Mr. Thompson said.

Everyone is up in arms about the libel this is to army men. What about to immigration patriots? Second Amendment defenders? Limited government crusaders? Tax protesters?

Every time, someone cries “the children; we’re saddling our children with debt, ” I cringe. F-ck the children. What about We the Workings Stiffs? I’m beginning to feel the same about “our men and women in the military” mantra. The military is not more deserving than the rest of us.

One more thing: The report was commissioned during the administration of President George W. Bush and completed by his worthy successor.

Statist Struggles With States' Rights

Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, The State

States across the country are discovering the 10th Amendment to the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Quaint, I know, but to the federal government were delegated only limited and enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8). Most everything it does these days is extraconstitutional.

Forced to take fiat currency from the federales, the states also realize that the price is too high to pay: not only must they heed the occupying force, they must bankrupt themselves in the process. For accepting these piles of paper implies expanding services and keeping them going in perpetuity.

So, governors and state representatives are invoking that which ought to have been the law of the land: the ingenious 10th Amendment.

But what happens if you are neoconservative, or have such proclivities, and think that the manner in which Lincoln sundered the federal structure was not only constitutional but moral?

Why, then, you’re in a bit of a pickle. To his credit, Harvard grad Ben Shapiro is a very bright neoconservative, who’s well aware of the contradiction inherent in a sudden support for the states in their rightful reclamation of sovereignty.

See what you think of the tack Shapiro takes:

The federal response to the slavery question was quick and right – President Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War restored for all time the founding promises of the Declaration of Independence. Despite the Civil War, however, the legacy of Jim Crow further eroded the moral authority of states’ rights. And the federal government, wielding the ethical imperative of racial equality, stepped in. States’ rights advocates were forever branded as bigoted Orval Faubus types, standing in the doorways of segregated schoolhouses.

Now states are surprised to find that their ability to resist federal directives has been all but extinguished. They are surprised that they are no longer able to set their own standards regarding social, economic or criminal policy. They are surprised that through a combination of moral blindness and drooling greed, they surrendered their role in the constitutional system.

Surrendered? Not quite.

It would seem that young Ben is equally surprised at the quest for the “reinstitution of local government” (a phrase that diminishes the idea of state sovereignty).

Statist Struggles With States’ Rights

Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, The State

States across the country are discovering the 10th Amendment to the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Quaint, I know, but to the federal government were delegated only limited and enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8). Most everything it does these days is extraconstitutional.

Forced to take fiat currency from the federales, the states also realize that the price is too high to pay: not only must they heed the occupying force, they must bankrupt themselves in the process. For accepting these piles of paper implies expanding services and keeping them going in perpetuity.

So, governors and state representatives are invoking that which ought to have been the law of the land: the ingenious 10th Amendment.

But what happens if you are neoconservative, or have such proclivities, and think that the manner in which Lincoln sundered the federal structure was not only constitutional but moral?

Why, then, you’re in a bit of a pickle. To his credit, Harvard grad Ben Shapiro is a very bright neoconservative, who’s well aware of the contradiction inherent in a sudden support for the states in their rightful reclamation of sovereignty.

See what you think of the tack Shapiro takes:

The federal response to the slavery question was quick and right – President Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War restored for all time the founding promises of the Declaration of Independence. Despite the Civil War, however, the legacy of Jim Crow further eroded the moral authority of states’ rights. And the federal government, wielding the ethical imperative of racial equality, stepped in. States’ rights advocates were forever branded as bigoted Orval Faubus types, standing in the doorways of segregated schoolhouses.

Now states are surprised to find that their ability to resist federal directives has been all but extinguished. They are surprised that they are no longer able to set their own standards regarding social, economic or criminal policy. They are surprised that through a combination of moral blindness and drooling greed, they surrendered their role in the constitutional system.

Surrendered? Not quite.

It would seem that young Ben is equally surprised at the quest for the “reinstitution of local government” (a phrase that diminishes the idea of state sovereignty).