Classic Liberal Blog

Are you against the nationalization of banks, auto companies, healthcare, and financial industries?

Do you oppose the progressive agenda of the Democratic Party (and really, the Republican Party too)?

Do you think the government should control its spending?

Are you overtaxed?

Do you believe the Constitution should be enforced?

Did the Federal Reserve cause the housing bubble? Should it be audited?

Do you support Ron Paul?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will notify the Department of Homeland Security, telling them that you're a very dangerous "extremist," and potential terrorist too.

The Hidden Agenda of the Southern Poverty Law Center

In an excellent piece “What's behind the anti-Tea Party hate narrative?” the Washington Examiner’s Chief Washington Correspondent Byron York notes that “Many of the claims that extremism is on the rise in America originate in research done by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based group that for nearly 40 years has tracked what it says is the growing threat of intolerance in the United States.”

The SPLC is not only taken seriously by the liberal media, but also by the Department of Homeland Security. When they issued their now infamous report on “Right Wing Extremists” that warned “disgruntled” military veterans will become potential terrorists, they quoted a SPLC report entitled "A Few Bad Men" that claims racists are infiltrating the military.

Coincidentally, "A Few Bad Men" appeared as the SPLC attacked the American Legion for its support of immigration enforcement, which they called "Legionnaires' Disease."

This is indicative of what the SPLC is really about. Instead of monitoring “hate” and “extremism,” they are concerned with tarring patriotic Americans who oppose their left wing agenda as haters and extremists.

[T]he SPLC in a nutshell. The Lord of the Rings is racist, but a group called “The Race” is not. Patriotic Tea Partiers are potential terrorists, but actual terrorists like Bill Ayers are civil rights organizers.

SPLC Spins Crazy Conspiracy Theory About Crazy Conspiracy Theorists

Catherine Bleish is a 26-year-old libertarian who was a Ron Paul delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention. She is a leader of the Liberty Restoration Project which, among other things, opposes the federal “War on Drugs” and denounces the Patriot Act as “an assault against the civil liberties of Americans.”

Perhaps you disagree with those views, but is Bleish dangerous?

The Southern Poverty Law Center seems to think so.

The SPLC’s scary references to militias and conspiracies and a “resurgent movement” very much echo Bill Clinton’s recent conflation of the tea party with Timothy McVeigh and, like Clinton, the Montgomery, Ala.-based organization singled out Rep. Michelle Bachmann, calling her an “enabler” of the Patriot movement. Also labeled “enablers” by the SPLC were Glenn Beck and Andrew Napolitano of Fox News, as well as Ron Paul, the Texas congressman ...

If Bleish is considered a “conspiracy theorist,” that’s probably because of her group “Operation: De-Fuse,” which depicts the Department of Homeland Security as part of a “police/surveillance state” that is “militarizing and federalizing our police forces.”

The name of Operation: De-Fuse is a reference the DHS “fusion centers” such as the Missouri Information Analysis Center, which issued a controversial 2009 report identifying Ron Paul supporters and pro-life activists ... as potential terrorists.

If DHS is identifying third-party political movements as threats, is it irrational for supporters of those movements to consider the DHS a threat?

[T]he report says. “These men and women have helped to put key Patriot themes — the idea that President Obama is a Marxist, that he and other elites in the government are pushing a socialist takeover, that the United States plans secret concentration camps and so on — before millions of Americans, many of whom actually believe these completely false allegations.”

The federal government took over General Motors, “invested” billions of taxpayer dollars in Wall Street financial firms, and recently passed legislation to expand government control over the nation’s health-care system, but concerns about a “socialist takeover” are “completely false allegations”?

If you’re tempted to ask a question like that, you must be a dangerous kook, too. Don’t worry, though — as Farah says, you’re in good company.

It's no wonder that trust in government is at historic lows. As it should be!

"I used to be somebody that trusted the government. Now I really don’t trust anything."

I’ve long had a theory that most people don’t find libertarianism so much as it happens to them. They find themselves on the receiving end of some sort of government incompetence or abuse, or they know someone who is, and it starts them on the road to a generally more skeptical view of state power.

Ain't that the truth.

Regular readers of this blog know that I proudly answer "yes" to all of the questions asked at the beginning of the post.

Very Scary blog ... isn't it?