Secretary Napolitano is the real extremist

Ms. McMillan continues to play her role as the Token Conservative Columnist well, presenting yet another column consisting of faux outrage, fallacious logic, naivete, and brazen fabrication.

This report was begun under the Bush administration, as is obvious to anyone who deals with government bureaucracy (or, for that matter, good research) -- no such document could be initiated, researched, written, reviewed, and approved in three months. Furthermore, this is obviously not a high-level policy document, making it unlikely that Secretary Napolitano had any hand in its creation. Ms. McMillan's constant invocation of Napolitano's name is therefore an odd attempt at personalizing the report's contents, and of opening up opportunities for bizarre and unproductive ad hominem attacks (as on the immigration issue).

I have to question some of Ms. McMillan's statements regarding information contained within the report. I suspect much her confusion arises from not having actually read the report itself, since her list of "her favorites" is cribbed from assorted right-wing commentaries on the report (Google, for example, the phrase "Upset with the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China and India"), but we'll go through them individually to try to set things straight.

"Opposes restrictions on firearms": Actually, it's "Opposes *new* restrictions on firearms", which makes far more sense. Given that even the NRA is okay with some restrictions, Ms. McMillan seems to take a rather unorthodox view of the Second Amendment.

"Opposes immigration reform": The phrase "immigration reform" appears nowhere in the document, which makes sense, as it encompasses everything from legalizing everyone present in the country to building 20-foot walls along the borders and hunting door-to-door until every illegal is deported. "Opposing immigration reform" would therefore mean thinking everything is fine as it is.

"Fearful of communist regimes": In the report the phrase "fear of Communist regimes" appears alongside "related conspiracy theories"; i.e., they're talking about the people who think Obama is handing us over to the evil Commies. If Ms. McMillan is one of those, then she should say that rather than randomly mentioning Cuba (and has she been there lately? In either case, what's the point of this argument? I haven't been to Britain, Germany, or Canada lately -- so what?)

(Incidentally, here is another example of Ms. McMillan needing to avoid the big-but-cool-sounding words: it is not possible for either the Iron Curtain or the Cold War to exhibit "treachery".)

"Opposes a 'one-world' government": To which Ms. McMillan adds, "Is anyone actually in favor of this?", to which the answer is "no". Which is why this appears in the context of "related conspiracy theories", i.e., things that concern the nutjobs the report is talking about, not normal people.

"Opposes the policies of President Barack Obama to expand social programs": The relevant text is discussing *perceived* policies of the new administration; i.e., how they are perceived by the aforementioned nutjobs. Ms. McMillan not only twists this, but follows it up with a beautiful double fallacy of the excluded middle (favoring any "social programs" means you're a "socialist", and if you're not a "socialist", you're a "dangerous extremist", something neither stated nor implied in the report).

"Upset with the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China and India": The report actually mentions "manufacturing capability", but that's not Ms. McMillan's fault; she trusted the commentaries she read to accurately reflect the report, so she wouldn't have to read it herself. In any case, she once again fallaciously turns a simple statement of what some of these folks believe into a statement that all who believes it is an extremist, something that the report is obviously not saying.

"The positions this report warns of do not come close to defining an extremist; instead, they describe someone who genuinely supports the United States.": Perhaps, if you limit "genuinely supports the United States" to "agrees with my twisted interpretations (and those I copied) of what the report said", and ignore other things in the report not mentioned in this column, like extrajudicial attacks on immigrants, paramilitary training, targeting government facilities for violent attack, joining white supremacist groups, attempting to recruit and radicalize returning military personnel, and spreading information on weapon fabrication and use via the Internet. But again, to be aware of those would have required reading the report.

"According to Napolitano's criteria, even the founding fathers would be classified as extremists.": I don't think the Founding Fathers staked out positions regarding communism, one-world government, amnesty for illegal immigrants from Latin America, export of manufacturing capability to South and East Asia, or any of the unmentioned-by-Ms. McMillan items in the paragraph above. All of which makes this attempt to invoke the Founders cute, but rather unconvincing.

"Never mind the fact that they just put their lives on the line to protect America - now the military is the biggest threat to our safety?": I'd appreciate it very much if Ms. McMillan could point out where in the report this is stated. Otherwise, "give me a break", indeed.

I look forward to Ms. McMillan's column next week, wherein I trust she will be equally "appalled" by the DHS report released in January regarding leftwing extremism. That Michael Chertoff has gotten a pass for too darn long.