So You Say You Want a Revolution, Part 2

After a timely DHS memo on right-wing extremism was leaked earlier this week, Michelle Malkin had a two-day public tantrum as she insisted the report was talking about conservatives in general. Of course, it wasn't. (No really, read it.)  

Many elsewhere have suggested that this reaction, common in the right-wing blogosphere, is evidence of a guilty mind.  Maybe.  But the strong form of that inference would be a bit unfair.   I am certain Malkin et al would never join a militia group or bomb a federal building.   I am concerned, however, that the recent rhetoric on the right plays directly into the hands of the people and groups who are described in the memo.

David Frum, no friend of the left, describes the tone in a conversation with Spectator:

Yet to listen to Fox News and other conservative media, you’d think we were living in Czechoslovakia in the final hours before the 1948 communist coup. Anchors end interviews by solemnly pledging to defend liberty and oppose tyranny. The network’s rising star Glenn Beck has mused about the coming turn to totalitarianism — and warned his audience that he has not been able to ‘debunk’ fears that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is constructing an archipelago of concentration camps for political opponents of the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, members of Congress (other than Bachman) are calling for armed revolt:

It’s about our founding fathers who in 1773 threw a little party called the Boston tea party. And fought against tyranny and oppressive taxes, does that sound familiar? We’re continuing that revolution right here in Austin, TX today. Thomas Jefferson once said that the tree of liberty will be fed with the blood of tyrants and patriots. You are the patriots.

and political assassination:

“I think that the decision to raise taxes by 50 percent in Illinois is political suicide,” Kirk said of Quinn’s proposal to raise the tax rate to 4.5 percent from 3 percent, coupled with an increase in the personal deduction. “I think the people of Illinois are ready to shoot anyone who is going to raise taxes by that degree.” 

Georgia has voted to "disband" the union, and the Texas governor won't rule out secession.

John Aravosis at America Blog summarizes perfectly:

The Republican party has a serious problem with extremists, not just in its midst, but among its leadership and its key allies in the faux media (FOX News) and its grassroots (Limbaugh, the blogs, and the religious right). The GOP is quite literally pushing their most extreme followers to violence. And now that they're calling on the government to ignore known terrorist threats, it's only a matter of time before something violent happens, and then the Republican party will find itself out of power permanently. 

Thanks to the legacy of Karl Rove (attack your opponents with your own greatest weakness), the dominant form of political discourse on the right seems to be projection.