I was reading The Rude Pundit today and he had a link up to a Mother Jones editorial about the rise of right wing extremist groups. The editorial discusses, in a fairly long-winded way, the fact that extremist groups want to operate outside the American system, overturning governments they dislike through violence and force of arms, rather than elections. They tie this into Richard Hofstadter, the Paranoid Style, what have you – you’ve probably heard this song before.

“The paranoid spokesman,” Hofstadter wrote, “is always manning the barricades of civilization…Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse…He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised…Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.”

The interesting part comes when they try to tie the extremist actors in the right wing to first the Republicans in Congress, and then.. well, me. (Us?)

If this were all just so much blowhardery—designed merely to drive ratings and bait liberal bloggers—it would be slightly tawdry but perfectly ordinary political theater for the groundlings. But what may have started as tactical rhetoric has become a philosophy of governing. As MoJo blogger Kevin Drum has put it, the congressional minority’s guiding principle is now “What part of NO! don’t you understand?”

This is the true danger of condoning rhetoric like Oath Keepers’: It’s not just that it might push some from the paranoid fringe to the terrorist fringe. It’s that the political debate becomes corroded to the point where we as a nation no longer have enough common ground to agree to disagree. When one side’s goal is to stonewall and destroy rather than discuss and engage, we get paralysis—it takes two to tango, but only one to stonewall. (And stonewall-and-destroy is by no means a strategy unique to Republicans—yes, kill-the-health-care-bill lefties, that means you.) There are many ways to attack democracy, and one of them is to slowly, cynically undermine the founders’ mandate: to work together toward a more perfect union.

In the original, ‘kill-the-health-care-bill lefties’ links to Jane’s Huffpo piece listing ten reasons to oppose a specific piece of legislation. Which is somehow akin to bringing down a government through unreasoning fanaticism. (They might have noticed that Jane’s call was specific to the Senate health bill, not the House’s version or healthcare reform in general, but that subtle point slipped past their keen editorial radar somehow. Reading comprehension’s not what it used to be)

Aside from convincing me to never purchase another copy of Mother Jones, I don’t find this editor’s note very persuasive, but let’s see if we can follow their logic:

1) Extremist right-wing groups exhibit Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style, characterized by a fanatical, uncompromising stance that views one’s enemies as pure evil and all political conflicts as fights to the death between good and evil.

2) Republicans in Congress have translated this into a political strategy, using obstructionism to try and bring down the government rather than allow any of their evil enemy’s policies to take effect.

3) Progressives who oppose a specific piece of legislation are just the same as Republicans in Congress, because they don’t agree with President Obama on absolutely everything ever. Oh, and they’re subversives undermining the country, attacking democracy and betraying the Founders.

Hmm. What was that definition of the Paranoid Style again?

Because it sounds a lot like the editors at Mother Jones.