Comment

Press Release from DHS on 'Right-Wing Extremism' Report

271
Irenike4/15/2009 1:35:34 pm PDT

Dear Charles,

I respect your quest for the truth, and your unflinching commitment to the facts. Let me ask you something. Since the time you began going after right-wing loonies such as creationists, and since the time you started criticizing Republicans for hyperventilating about the DHS report, has your hate mail from left-wingers changed for the better in any way? Have any left-wing journalists given you credit for being clear-eyed about the problem of right-wing extremists in the Republican party? Have any MSM blogs or TV shows invited you to give your opinions about this topic? Has anybody apologized for calling you an extremist, and now sees you as a rational moderate because of your recent posts?

I am not being sarcastic. I believe you do deserve credit for this, but I’ll bet you haven’t heard a peep from your ideological opponents. If you have, please let us know, and I’ll happily eat crow.

See, the main problem isn’t the extremist loonies among conservatives. Left or right, the loonies are there. The problem is that those on the right are held to different standards than those on the left. That is why Obama never got defined by his associations with loonies such as Ayers or Dohrn or Wright. But now, because of the DHS report, my conservative views are suddenly suspect and linked with potential right-wing terrorist activity — activity, by the way, that still exists as mere speculation, not as solid fact.

I’m in the hyperventilating camp, not because I don’t think there are loonies in my political party (I know there are) but because I am being held to a different standard than a Democratic counterpart. This DHS report, in the end, is nothing but a big smear campaign. If it forces the Republicans to take stock of their ranks and boot out the fringe elements, great. It will have produced some good. But the harm I fear it will cause outweighs the good. It gives the MSM official government sanction to smear all conservatives and Republicans as potentially dangerous extremists while supplying even more excuses to ignore the very real threat of Islamist terrorism.