Beware the Extreme Libertarian; the Joke that is MSNBC

What Joseph McCarthy and the House of Un-American Activities Committee is to Conservatives, the Southern Poverty Law Center is to Liberals. The SPLC played an important role in investigating the Klu Klux Klan, but as the white supremacist movement has slowed to a relative trickle in the US, the SPLC has stooped to declaring and any and all patriotic organization as racists, including the Family Research Center, Tea Party, Oath Keepers, Libertarians, returning veterans, gun owners and Ron Paul Supporters.

 The SPLC has been criticized for using hyperbole and overstating the prevalence of hate groups to raise large amounts of money. In a 2000 Harper's Magazine magazine article, Ken Silverstein said that Dees has kept the SPLC focused on fighting anti-minority groups like the KKK, whose membership has declined to just 2,000, instead of on issues like homelessness, mostly because of the former issue makes for more lucrative fundraising. The article also claimed that the SPLC "spends twice as much on fund-raising--$5.76 million last year--as it does on legal services for victims of civil rights abuses." Harper's also pointed out that more than 95% of hate crimes are committed by lone wolves without any connection to militia groups the SPLC speaks . In other words, if the SPLC doesn't find a hate group under every rock, it will start to loose funding. wikipedia

The SPLS has also become a darling of the left, using the tactic embraced by liberals of attacking a group that has a political view different from theirs by declaring  they are racists (always without any proof what so ever). There has never been any validity to any of these claims as  most of the conservatives groups mentioned (and many more than exist in the US) have never been associated with violence of any kind and have bee self policing to remove any fringe elements. As a matter of fact, it is the liberal groups that have latched onto violence and intimidation to try and extinguish any dissenting  voices.  The SPLS has joined the left claiming any group the opposes a against a strong central government and the destruction of privacy  rights, or advocates for nation sovereignty or the individual rights articulated in the US Constitution as terrorists and racists and is decidedly anti-Christian. 

"one visualizes a bunch of overweight  senior citizens in colonial costumes setting off red, white and blue suicide bombs and yelling "Git-r-done!".

Imagine if you will a Saturday Night Live parody of MSNBC, were Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok is interviewed by MSNBC in an attempt to somehow prove  the their initial claims that the Boston Marathon bombings was the result of right wing extremists; in this case Extreme Libertarian group (an  imaginary extremist  group  manufactured by the SPLC). When it turned out that  Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were actually extreme Islamic terrorists associated with the ultra violent Chechnya rebels. But not to be deterred MSNBC and the SPLC  laughably uses the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon to somehow connect the Tsarnaev's with their Extreme Libertarian group (the SPLC created this imaginary group as they pondered a race war in the US where a violent out growth of the Tea Party links up with al Queda at the Mexican border and reeks havoc; one visualizes a bunch of overweight  senior citizens in colonial costumes setting off red, white and blue suicide bombs and yelling "Git-r-done!". So, in amongst the jihad/terrorists/anti-Semitic they found Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a “fan”  conspiracy theorists of Alex Jones and somehow theorized Jones as simultaneously extreme right wing, extreme libertarian and racists.The real comedy here is this was no parody. Mark Potok then interjects his revisionist history (a very common tactic of the left) trying to blame the current patriot movement and Tea Party on the election of our first black President so they can label them racists. This completely ignores the patriot movement that intensified under the Clinton administration that was primarily a reaction to the Federal Assault Weapons ban; this Janet Reno/Federal attack on the 2nd Amendment resulted in the atrocities at Waco, Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing. You also have the the beginnings of the Tea Party protesting federal spending deficits and tax increases in the 1990's and by 2001 Tea Party tax protestors were sending tea bags to their representatives on April 15. It is generally accepted that rather than a reaction to a black president, it was  the bailouts of banks by the Bush and Obama administrations that triggered the Tea Party's rise in 2008, with the overriding issue of Washington tuning out the voices of the common citizen.

MSNBC Parodies Itself
 Perhaps the summer lull is to blame for Now’s decision to broadcast a segment about racial animus motivating the American right in for umpteenth time. Perhaps it is a psychological compulsion. No matter. To summarize the predictable segment below, Potok alleged that the Tsarnaevs were motivated to their bloody act of terrorism by Jones’ unhinged rants. This led the panel to decry the rise of racism in America which has followed the political ascension of President Barack Obama.

So there you have it. There is a reason why many have decried the SPLC as a hate group itself The Southern Poverty Law Center Law Center is a Hate Group
It has gone beyond it's stated purpose " a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society", and has now declared itself the morale compass of America, who's sole purpose seems to demonize the US Bill of Rights and any organization that believes in patriotism, asserts their freedoms derived from the US Constitution/Bill of Rights and or opposes their worldview that the populace needs to relinquish all individual rights and national sovereignty in the name of forced equality and social justice. 

The Terrorist Attack At Sandy Hook School

Imagine that terrorist sleeper cells were attacking Americans in schools, movie theaters, churches and malls; all places that are traditionally gun free zones. Now Imagine that the President of the United States said the country will be responding to this terrorist attack with a gun ban; there would be a collective, "what?"  Well you don't have to imagine anything, because it's happening in the US right now. Psychotic killers are targeting Americans and leaving mass casualty massacres in their wake; the most recent took the lives of 20 children and 6 teachers at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut. Now the President has numerous options at his disposal, such as Homeland Security to protect Americans from terrorists, but instead he targets law abiding citizens who want to buy a firearms for protection. Obviously there is no way a gun ban will stop terrorists attacks, not now or in the foreseeable future. So why is the President and other Liberals pushing so hard for weapons ban? Are we surrendering?


I published this in a previous blog Weapons Bans And Other Symbolic Nonsense; but it's too important not to repeat; In 2004 The Nation Institute of Justice released it's report on the Federal Assault Weapons Ban An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003 In general the finding were there's no evidence that an assault weapons (AW) ban accomplished it's goal to reduce gun violence; this included the fact the pistols with large capacity magazines (LCM) were classified as assault pistols and pistols are used in far more crimes that AR(s). " ...the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. AWs were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban. LCMs are involved in a more substantial share of gun crimes, but it is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than ten shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading." So I say again Obviously there is no way a gun ban will stop terrorists attacks, not now or in the foreseeable future.

Has TSA Finally Crossed The Line With Enhanced Punitive Pat Downs?

Arrogance and and the over reaching of an ever increasing police state, may soon be the undoing of the TSA and Homeland Security. Once again Americans are faced with the issue referred to by Benjamin Franklin when he said "people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." Here the issue is also about privacy, a right so intrinsic to freedom, that absent privacy, freedom can not really exist. The most frequently quoted statement by a Supreme Court justice on the subject of privacy comes in Justice Brandeis's dissent in Olmstead v. U. S. (1928):
"The makers of our Constitution understood the need to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness, and the protections guaranteed by this are much broader in scope, and include the right to life and an inviolate personality -- the right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. The principle underlying the Fourth and Fifth Amendments is protection against invasions of the sanctities of a man's home and privacies of life. This is a recognition of the significance of man's spiritual nature, his feelings, and his intellect." There is a price to living

What has become obvious to most Americans, is that the TSA and the Federal Government has crossed the line in the American psyche the separates need for security and right to freedom. While the supposed rational behind the Full Body (or Naked Body) scanners is to protect flyers from terrorists, it has becoming more common knowledge that the likelihood of terrorists using a plane for terrorism has diminished greatly as a result of 911. In a 2008 article Jeffery Goldberg quoted security expert Bruce Schneier, “Transportation Security Administration, which is meant to protect American aviation from al Qaeda, represents an egregious waste of tax dollars, dollars that could otherwise be used to catch terrorists before they arrive at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport, by which time it is, generally speaking, too late…. Counter terrorism in the airport is a show designed to make people feel better,” he said. “Only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.” This assumes, of course, that al Qaeda will target airplanes for hijacking, or target aviation at all. “We defend against what the terrorists did last week,” Schneider said. He believes that the country would be just as safe as it is today if airport security were rolled back to pre-9/11 levels. “Spend the rest of your money on intelligence, investigations, and emergency response.”

Interestingly this over stepping of our 4th Amendment right to be free from governmental unreasonable search and seizure is a result of political correctness and a rather casual reading of the 14th Amendments equal protection under the law clause. In other words, the government would rather violate the right to privacy of the vast majority of non-Muslim Americans, than hurt the feelings of a minority of Muslims . While profiling Muslims may sound patently unconstitutional, one must remember so are full body scans and “enhanced pat downs” searches without probable cause. Profiling is only unconstitutional if it is arbitrary. The difference is the Federal Government has decided that the emergency circumstances that allow the violation of our Constitution rights, are better served against the majority of Americans then the minority of Muslims (be they be American citizens or not). The TSA already has what they call threat-based screening for those from a country of interest such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen, and four countries the US regards as state sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. But as a result the absurd thought process of the TSA, these screenings are considered controversial, and the frequency of these threat-based screenings are determined by world intelligence threat assessments. After 911, Israel offered to assist the United States in these form of threat based screenings that have been 100% successful. But the US refused, preferring to individually screen every flyer; this is lunacy.

Americans are actually rather prudish people. Not only are their proxemics, or zone of personal safety larger than most other societal norms, they don’t liked to be touched by strangers and they like to pick and choose who gets to see them naked. If there is a defining action by the TSA it is their enhanced pat-downs. And it’s not they are more intrusive, which they are, but it’s their stated purpose. The TSA has let it be known that the enhanced pat downs are not for enhanced security, the pat downs have been enhanced to make the passenger that has “opted-out” of the full body scanner feel so violated that they dare not opt out again; in essence the TSA has become one of the most oppressive arms of the federal government our country has ever known and is now punishing Americans for not wanting to do things their way. On cannot name one other Federal Government agency that is so draconian that it is trying to enforce its policies with physical pain and psychological trauma.The TSA has already stated that the next stage is portable full body scanners for shopping malls and schools; this of course would be the end of liberty and freedom in our country. It needs to stop. Will we be opting-out some security? Yes. Will there be a greater chance of a terrorist’s successful attack? This of course is unknown, but some of the best anti-terrorists say no. The reason is simple, we now no more about al Qaeda than they know about themselves. America has the technology to stop terrorism short of stripping everyone naked as the Nazi’s did. Let me repeat Benjamin Franklin one more time, "people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." There at two ways airline security and within this country are likely to go; the United States can continue on this path toward greater tyranny by assuming every person is equally suspect, or it can move toward the Israeli model that believes the 99% are innocent and spend your resources fretting out the minority that is the true threat. One thing is for sure, the very nature of government is to control the governed and what ever freedom you give up for a questionable promise of safety will not be given back without a fight. Further the fight to retain a freedom will always be easier than the fight to win back a freedom.

edited 11/16/10. After writing this OpEd it was brought to my attention that Janet Napolitano has repeatedly stated that the enhanced pat downs are not done for punishment. While it has been documented that Napolitano is continually at odds with the truth, I will include this article by Charlie Leocha from Consumer Traveler. The article, TSA Admits to Punishing Travelers (one of many from different sources) was written back in August and is self explanatory.