Unhappy Anniversary

Today is the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, and we are being regaled, this evening, with a special presentation on MSNBC, hosted by Rachel Maddow, entitled “The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist”. I'm not going to watch the show; I can't, because I don't have cable. But I will make a prediction, which is that a fairly large, thick, bright line will be drawn, by Ms. Maddow, between McVeigh -- and home-grown terrorists in general (not that there are all that many to date) -- and the “militia movement”, and from there an equally large, thick, bright line to “tea partiers”, people opposed to ObamaCare and illegal immigration, bailouts, et cetera. She may not name names, but that will be the implication. The average tea partier is driving around with his car trunk full of fertilizer, just waiting for an opportunity to blow something up – anything, really, as long as it has some connection to the federal government. After all, hasn't the Obama administration already warned all government workers that they are in the crosshairs of domestic terrorists? And what is the answer to this threat – clearly, pre-emptive strikes are in order, by law enforcement as well as by the media... and as we see, this process is already well underway. Hey – if pre-emptive strikes on foreign countries are good enough in the face of “WMDs”, they should certainly be good enough on the domestic side. Didn't FDR do the right thing by rounding up all the Japanese-Americans? (He would have rounded up all the German-Americans and Italian-Americans too, but there were just too darned many, and they blended in too readily with “real Americans”.)

Listen to – I mean read – the conversation between Maddow and TODAY's Matt Lauer (excerpts thereof):

RM: He (McVeigh) saw himself as part of a movement – a gun rights-based, anti-government, so-called patriot movement...

ML: This movement you talk about, there were arrests recently in Michigan, militia members plotting anti-government activities... do we know, have any idea how widespread this movement is right now?

RM: It's hard to quantify, but when you talk to law enforcement sources -- I spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about this last week on my show – it does seem like there's a sort of a resurgence of those movements in general...

ML: Fueled by what?

RM: Fueled by the same things that fueled them in the 90s, fueled a lot by economic dislocation – that doesn't get enough credit as a cause. Also by alienation from the government -- feel that the government is on the other side, not on your side. And it's the sort of movement that ebbs and flows over American history; right now it's flowing. And it doesn't mean that anybody who's in the movement right now is the next Timothy McVeigh, but it does mean that we ought to pay attention to the risks.


You see the lines being drawn already? “Gun rights” equals terrorism; “anti-government” equals terrorism. “Patriot” equals terrorism! And of course the current crop of “militia” organizations are direct descendants of McVeigh, and likely to do the same thing. And what, after all, does “plotting anti-government activities” include? Well, the tea party protests are most definitely anti-government activities, so I guess anyone involved in planning those protests is engaged in “plotting”. Which means it would be perfectly within the scope of the anti-terrorist mandate to stop them.

And as far as “economic dislocation” goes, no one seemed all that upset when economic dislocation caused all the urban riots of the 1960s and 1970s; back then, it was perfectly understandable.

Who out there expects the liberal media to carefully distinguish between bonafide terrorists and these “militias” that are mostly just a bunch of yokels tromping through the woods on weekends playing soldier? And who expects them to, likewise, carefully distinguish between the militias and ordinary people protesting out-of-control government? I sure don't. It's all a matter of building up the case for suppression of protest and dissent, and pre-emptive arrest, detention, and trumped-up charges. At least that's how it looks to me.

And of course, Maddow delivers the usual disclaimer: “It doesn't mean that anybody who's in the movement right now is the next Timothy McVeigh.” Right. But what are the chances that there aren't hundreds, or even thousands, of mini-McVeighs lurking in the ranks of the militias, and attending tea party rallies, just waiting for a chance to strike back? Yeah – it's time to stoke up the fires of fear again, now that we (i.e., liberals) are in charge.

Well – if you decide to watch the show tonight, please take notes. I'd like to know how close to the target I've managed to come.