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Tell Congress: Investigate and Defund West Point's Center for Combating Terrorism

West Point's Center for Combating Terrorism released a report claiming that conservatives, libertarians are a threat to society.

Are individuals interested in self-government and constitutional rights domestic enemies?

Are groups that stress conservative values or self-sufficiency a threat to national security?

According to a recent study, both of these questions would be answered “yes.”

The striking fact is this: this report wasn’t written by a typical liberal think-tank like the Southern Poverty Law Center. No; this “report” was written by the U.S. Military!

That’s right; the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. – a place that trains United States military officers – produced a 148-page study examining the dangers of the American “far right,” a group, the study says, made of individuals interested in “civil activism, individual freedom, and self-government.”  

The fact that West Point would devote resources to study the “dangers” of America’s “far right” – a sweeping term that includes non-violent, principled individuals who would fit in well at a Tea Party rally – is entirely absurd!

The report entitled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right” was written by Arie Perliger of West Point’s Center for Combating Terror, a department that generally focuses on radical overseas terrorist organizations like al Qaeda.

This is to say that this report is a complete departure from what the Center should be focusing its energy on -- not to mention a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.

Perliger’s effort which lumps conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Party-type folks in with Skinhead and KKK groups is not scholarship, but propaganda.

The report identifies three major movements as threats: the racist/white supremacy movement, the anti-federalist movement, and the fundamentalist movement. As these are additionally broken-down throughout the report we find that Christian groups, anti-abortion groups, preparedness groups/militias, etc. are also identified.

Perhaps the most striking is Perliger’s criteria for identifying the “dangerous” ideology of the anti-federalist movement: those who espouse “strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights.”

These ideas which Perliger vilifies were the very sentiments held by the American Founders which led them to secede from Britain, write the Constitution, and adopt the Bill of Rights!

Let’s not forget that America's Supreme Law was designed to limit government exactly because governments naturally are tyrannical and do “intrude” on individual rights!

We must demand Congress to investigate every department and program at West Point to defund any and all activity that targets American citizens!

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