Here’s a civil liberties can-of-worms waiting to happen:
While foreign groups can be classified as ‘terrorist groups’ and any support given to them be considered criminal, it hasn’t applied to US groups.
So..who is to say what a domestic terrorist group is? The Klan? The Black Panthers? Greenpeace? Earth First? The JDL? The NRA?
This sort of thing will run smack into the wall of Amendment One, but by the time that makes it way to the Supreme Court there’ll be plenty of folks cooling their heels in a federal cell somewhere.
It’s a slippery slope to try and say whats a terrorist group and what isn’t. The easy definition would be any group that goes beyond theory and gets into practice. Or, put another way, when the talkers become doers. But…that ol’ bugaboo of ‘conspiracy’ comes into play. Get three guys sitting around a table who drink a few beers and talk about how they’d ‘straighten out those guys’ and -whammo- conspiracy. Nevermind that they couldn’t get past the warm-up levels in Call Of Duty.
Certainly, this sort of demonization fits into the current practice of marginalizing particular groups to make their persecution, usually through the legal system, more palatable to the rest of us.
This is definitely something to keep an eye on.
They have stopped enforcing border laws, and, American citizens, are the problem? What border should we cross to get our country back?
Definitely a can of worms. Pretty much every anti-terrorism mechanism that has been put in place to-date has had some examples of “pushing the envelope” as well as clear-cut abuse (e.g., Feds tracking their girlfriend’s movements through domestic surveillance tools to see what she’s up to while they’re at work) and good old fashioned incompetence (e.g., if your name sounds like a name on our terrorist list, then you must me a terrorist, and no, we can’t fix the problem once it has been discovered). So… no way this idea could go bad, right?
If a group is breaking the law and you’re supporting them, it would seem that there are several ways to go after both them and you. If the group is not breaking the law, then leave them alone.
If laws were written clearly and we all shared the same values then what you say would be true. Even with existing law if a DA decides you are a bad influence, you don’t have much protection from BS prosecution.
“The easy definition would be any group that goes beyond theory and gets into practice.”
You mean, like, some guy and a couple buddies at the range, letting off steam about the government and putting rounds downrange at the same time?
Only if there were some of those aforementioned government types standing downrange.
That would be more than just “practice.” 😉
Most states, for instance, have anti-paramilitary laws that already make that sort of thing illegal….
tptb for some reason are all-in with the southern poverty law center, one of the most racist and corrupt organizations in existence and cite them as gospel as to who the “terrorists” are. they proclaim the tea party as dangerous extremists and veterans as demented killers and anyone with a confederate flag should be shot. the regime laps it up, feeds it to the media as “news” and laughs all the way to the golf course as headlines proclaim. the funny thing is without the very people they villify, they would starve.
“the funny thing is without the very people they villify, they would starve.”
no. they would not. we would.
The feds who don’t know their own history are doomed to repeat it.
If Washington D.C. wants to voluntarily paint themselves as Lobsterbacks, it will greatly speed up the process of getting the entire country philosophically from 1755 to 1775.
Hint: that turns out badly for the Tories.
If they’d like to re-do that and see if they can crack the code better than George III and Parliament, by getting rid of what President HopeyDopey calls “that pesky Constitution” thingy, all I can say is “Batter up!”
Both sides aren’t bright enough to figure out they’ve been doing intramural softball so far. The major leagues are going to be downright medieval.
If the feds, and in particular the progressive SJWs who have been pushing us ever farther away from the Constitution since at least 1900, can’t get a grip on themselves and stop, they’re going to find out that a two-way shooting range is a tough place to live. And under such a situation, I suspect it’s far easier to recruit liberty-minded people who want to be left at liberty and are willing to die for it – and more importantly to kill for it, than it is going to be to find more people who want government to give them everything for nothing, and are willing to die for that.
Hell a few guys sitting around drinking beers and venting about the government… that was my entire barracks during the Clinton years.
I wish someone would make a “domestic extremist” morale patch.
Well, there certainly have been domestic terrorist groups in the US. The Weathermen, KKK, 19 May (Communists), FALN and Black Liberation Army are all examples of domestic groups that used terror tactics to achieve political goals. The FBI’s Domestic Terrorist Most Wanted list on http://www.FBI.Gov lists individuals from several of these groups as currently wanted.