Critics of the critics rely on a dishonest reading of the report. They draw passages from the report which allert the reader to hypothetical, though not unprecedented nor unimaginable examples of possible activity by “rightwing extremists” .

Nobody, not even the most obtusely jealous partisan of the conservative disposition, would deny that there is such a thing as “rightwing extremism”. Yet ordinary conservatives consider themselves targetted by this report. Why? Because after reading the report’s warnings of “rightwing extremism,” they actually read the report’s own definition of “rightwing extremism”.

It follows: “”Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.”

In the plainest terms possible, the DHS holds that skinheads and the Federalist Society are coequally threatening, violent and morally distorted parts of a single whole. It does not suppose that proponents of smaller government and federalism “may” be a vehicles for extremism. It holds that such ordinary and honorable views nessesarily are extremist.

Conservatives’ critics sacrifice this keystone feature of the report in order to construct the strawman they scoff at. And so follows the churlish inversion that conservatives have “adopted the mantle of right-wing extremism” in some sort of revealing reflex, when the fact of the matter is that the DHS report’s authors went out of their way to trap as much of the political spectrum within their definition of “extremism” as possible, and that should concern everyone.