Giving a New Meaning to "Domestic Violence"

During the George W. Bush Administration, when they created the Department of Homeland Security, Republicans and most-especially far-right conservatives lauded to the rafters the new post as the near-savior of America.  Be against it, and you may well be a traitor -- be against it, and at the very least you're certainly not patriotic, and are willing to make America unsafe against terrorists and all our enemies.  This is the Department of Homeland Security, after all!  And they wrapped themselves in it like the most comforting lambs-wool blanket.

Well, live by the sword, die by the sword.

DHS has put together an intelligence assessment, and it is centered specifically on the domestic terror threat from what are known as "right-wing sovereign citizen extremists."

In fact, as a CNN study of the report show, "Some federal and local law enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal to -- and in some cases greater than -- the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups, such as ISIS, that garner more public attention.​"

You can read the whole article and see the video here.

It's not just a case of an incident or two, but the DHS -- again, this is the beloved DHS that is needed to protect us all -- lists as many as 24 "violent sovereign citizen-related" in the United Stated in just the past few years, since 2010.

"Sovereign citizen" groups are those made up of extremists who believe believe that because their personal rights are under attack  they therefore are not required to obey laws or court orders or even anything as simple as a traffic stop. 

In most civilizations since the beginning of time, this is the accepted definition of "anarchy."  It's also the natural outgrowth of a disingenuous supposed-Era of Personal Responsibility which ridiculed the concept of how "It takes a village" to grow a society, all for the cause of merely and selfishly keeping government off our backs.  Ultimately, right-wing extremists is what you risk ending up getting when that's your philosophy.  it's pretty hard to love a country when you're at war with it and want to shrink the government so much that it's small enough to drown in a bathtub..

As whimsy would have it, these "sovereign citizens" seemingly are heirs of the same people -- or indeed the same people themselves -- who during the 1960s railed against the damn hippies with their long hair and free-living ways who, if they didn't love America, they could leave it.  The pesky differences are many, but for starters the damn hippies were about peace and love, and not shooting a traffic cop because you got pulled over for speeding.  (That's not being facetious, it's one of the many incidents detailed in the report, occurring in 2012 when a couple of Louisiana men began a shootout that killed two traffic policeman specifically because they believed the officers had no authority over how they drove their car.  Or over anything they did.)

The report notes that "law enforcement officers will remain the primary target of (sovereign citizen) violence over the next year due to their role in physically enforcing laws and regulations."

For anyone who tries to dismiss this targeting of law-enforcement as domestic terrorism and a threat to the nation's safety, imagine for a moment how you'd react if this was a story instead about black people.  Or even more specifically a growing, concerted organizing of black people.

And again, I repeat, this is a report from the Department of Homeland Security.  The love-child of the far right.  The unimpeachable savior of protecting America against terrorists and all our enemies.  If one wishes to dismiss its findings for any reason you think valid, so be it.  But then you pretty much have to dismiss the near-perfect validity of DHS.  (Personally, I have no particular problem with the DHS existing -- I just think that, like any government agency, it has flaws and needs heavy oversight.  But then, I'm not among those who felt the creation of the department was needed to prove one's patriotism and trusted with the full-faith and credit of George Bush, George Washington and God Almighty Himself.)

It's worth remembering that this isn't the first time we've gotten security reports about the threat to the country by right-wing extremist groups.  That was in 2009 when DHS published a study (that was done during the Bush Administration) about right-wing militia groups.  And when it occurred the last time, there was an heart-rending outcry from Republicans about how unfair and wrong and biased this was, somewhat akin to the sound of a pig being stuck.  

In the words of the philosopher Gomer Pyle:  "Full me once, shame on you.  Full me twice, shame on me."

The operative word here, though, is shame.