I’m an extremist.<\/p>\n
No, really.\u00a0 Janet Napolitano<\/a>, Nick Coleman, scads of intellectually-incontinent leftybloggers<\/a> and the Coffee Parties all say so.<\/p>\n Calling anyone to the right of Larry Pogemiller an “extremist” was a standard practice in Minnesota politics long before any non-poli-sci wonk ever heard of Saul Alinski.\u00a0 For generations, anyone in Minnesota who stood outside the great DFL-and-“moderate”-GOP, “marching-boldly-toward-the-future-hand-in-hand toward the\u00a0collective vision of our betters” ideal was called an extremist (provided they were on the right. And of course, bits and pieces of it have leaked out in the national culture; the idea that Rush Limbaugh listeners were a “vast right-wing conspiracy” responsible for the bombing of the Murragh building was the moment it all got really serious – the first time the (wife of a) sitting president had ever tied a perfectly legitimate free speech activity to mass-murder and terrorism.<\/p>\n Since then, trying to link anything – Second Amendment ctivistm, critizing free trade agreements, being a hardliner on immigration, being a pro-lifer or an uppity Libertarian or a tax protester, whatever – gets one called an “extremist” first, with questions not asked later.\u00a0 Several non-profits – including the inexplicably-well-regarded Southern Poverty Law Center – make a cottage industry out of McCarthyizing all non-“progressive” thought by linking all <\/em>of it to some form of fringe extremism or another.<\/p>\n It’s rubbish, of course.<\/p>\n But I figured – maybe it’s worth a look.<\/p>\n Maybe I am <\/em>an extremist!<\/p>\n This is the first part of a seven-part series, coming out on alternate blogging days ’til it’s done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m an extremist. No, really.\u00a0 Janet Napolitano, Nick Coleman, scads of intellectually-incontinent leftybloggers and the Coffee Parties all say so. Calling anyone to the right of Larry Pogemiller an “extremist” was a standard practice in Minnesota politics long before any non-poli-sci wonk ever heard of Saul Alinski.\u00a0 For generations, anyone in Minnesota who stood outside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-slander-files"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231","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=9231"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9307,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231\/revisions\/9307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}