{"id":10362,"date":"2010-04-28T05:33:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T10:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10362"},"modified":"2010-04-28T05:33:23","modified_gmt":"2010-04-28T10:33:23","slug":"the-new-mccarthyism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10362","title":{"rendered":"The New McCarthyism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;Southern Poverty Law Center&#8221; is\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/blog\/southern-poverty-law-centers-enemies-list-a-fantasy\/\">finding boogeymen under rocks<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Catherine Bleish is a 26-year-old libertarian who was a Ron Paul delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention. She is a leader of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.libertyrestorationproject.org\/\">Liberty Restoration Project<\/a> which, among other things, opposes the federal \u201cWar on Drugs\u201d and denounces the Patriot Act as \u201can assault against the civil liberties of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps you disagree with those views, but is Bleish <em>dangerous<\/em>?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Like Janet Napolitano&#8217;s watch list, the SPLC believes <em>every <\/em>conservative is dangerous:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a special report called \u201cMeet the \u2018Patriots\u2019\u201d issued last week, the SPLC named Bleish as one of 35 people \u201cat the heart of the resurgent movement.\u201d The report \u2014 which also names WorldNetDaily publisher Joseph Farah and Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media \u2014 describes the movement thus:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the last year and a half, militias and the larger antigovernment \u2018Patriot\u2019 movement have exploded, accompanied by the rapid expansion of other sectors of the radical right. \u2026 [T]he so-called Patriots [are] people who generally believe that the federal government is an evil entity that is engaged in a secret conspiracy to impose martial law, herd those who resist into concentration camps, and force the United States into a socialistic \u2018New World Order.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Patriots <em>generally <\/em>believe&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The weasel words are the candy coat on a blood libel.\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The SPLC\u2019s scary references to militias and conspiracies and a \u201cresurgent movement\u201d very much echo Bill Clinton\u2019s recent conflation of the tea party with Timothy McVeigh and, like Clinton, the Montgomery, Ala.-based organization singled out Rep. Michelle Bachmann, calling her an \u201cenabler\u201d of the Patriot movement. Also labeled \u201cenablers\u201d by the SPLC were Glenn Beck and Andrew Napolitano of Fox News, as well as Ron Paul, the Texas congressman whose quixotic 2008 presidential campaign helped turn Bleish into a full-time political activist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This was the sort of thing Joe McCarthy has been pilloried for for half a century &#8211; and at least he was partially right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;Southern Poverty Law Center&#8221; is\u00a0 finding boogeymen under rocks: Catherine Bleish is a 26-year-old libertarian who was a Ron Paul delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention. She is a leader of the Liberty Restoration Project which, among other things, opposes the federal \u201cWar on Drugs\u201d and denounces the Patriot Act as \u201can assault [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10362"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10367,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10362\/revisions\/10367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}