What bothers me about this situation is not the DHS report specifically. I’m worried about right-wing violence as much as left-wing violence. The problem is that there is no distinction in the vocabulary. On CNN and among Democratic congresspeople, people worried about out-of-control spending have been called “right-wing extremists”. In the DHS report, people who blow up buildings have been called “right-wing extremists”. By the first standard, I guess they think I’m a right-wing extremist. And yet I’m certainly not the latter.
But there has been no effort by the administration to temper the language or mark the distinction between policy critics who respect the political process and freely assemble under their constitional rights (as in Tea Parties), and the next Oklahoma City bomber.
They are using the same label for both, and that bothers me a great deal.
