THE MAINSTREAMING OF RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM, PART LXVIII

I know I should be freaking out about Ebola, but I want to write about The Washington Post's appalling decision to publish an opinion piece by a former Secret Service agent that includes this recommendation:

[Secret Service director Julia] Pierson should be replaced and the next director should come from outside the Secret Service, with the deputy director remaining an agent. In this role, a true leader, not a bureaucrat, is needed. Someone like Florida congressman and retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Allen West would be perfect for the role. West has successfully demonstrated that he possesses the leadership skills of a combat officer as well as managerial and diplomatic skills of a congressman, exactly the traits needed in the next director. Highly competent and beholden to no one in the Secret Service, he would be a superb director.

Allen West? Seriously?

Let's ignore the fact that West resigned from the military a decade ago just as an investigation found probable cause to determine that he'd assaulted and mock-executed a prisoner in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Let's ignore the fact that West specializes in verbal hand grenades, so it's preposterous to credit him with "diplomatic skills." The reason this is an insane recommendation is that we really can't be certain that West would consider it his duty to protect President Obama from harm.

Just last month, West wrote:

Barack Hussein Obama is an Islamist in his foreign policy perspectives and supports their cause. You can go back and listen to his 2009 speech in Cairo, where Muslim Brotherhood associates were seated front and center.

All the circumstantial and anecdotal evidence points to that conclusion.

In June, West had these exchanges with Rick Wiles of Trunews:

"Do you think Barack Obama is secretly aiding the rise of an Islamic caliphate?" Wiles asked West.

"I don't think it is secretly happening, I think that you can look at his actions and he is enabling Islamist forces to be successful in the Middle East," West replied. "He is aiding the rise of radical Islamism, not just in the Middle East but really across the world."

West wasn't done there: "We don't really know who this President Obama is and I'm not talking about his birth certificate. We don't know who he is, we don't know about his college transcripts, we don't know what he was doing in Pakistan when he was back in college and who funded him to go over to Pakistan."

When Wiles asked if "Barack Obama is the ultimate jihadist" and "waging jihad against the United States of America,” West argued that the president "has without a doubt sided with Islamists."

"I believe Barack Obama has an eastern orientation, not a western civilization orientation," West said.

This is a man who has accused the Democratic Party of being "an anti-Semitic party" that "is aligning itself with Islamists"; he's also said, "I believe there are about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party: It's called the Congressional Progressive Caucus." West says that Hillary Clinton -- possibly the next president -- has an "Islamist viewpoint." He's someone who might not even acknowledge the citizenship of American Muslims -- after all, he's said:

"We already have a 5th column that is already infiltrating into our colleges, into our universities, into our high schools, into our religious aspect, our cultural aspect, our financial, our political systems in this country. And that enemy represents something called Islam and Islam is a totalitarian theocratic political ideology, it is not a religion. It has not been a religion since 622 AD, and we need to have individuals that stand up and say that."

Oh, and did I mention that the woman he initially chose as his congressional chief of staff (until she was pressured to turn down the job) was a talk radio host who'd saud this in a speech?

I don't care how this gets painted by the mainstream media, I don't care if this shows up on YouTube, because I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave me a Second Amendment.

And if ballots don't work, bullets will.

This is the sort of extremism I wrote about yesterday -- extremism that's been mainstreamed because no one in the Beltway will challenge it, or even call it what it is. West is not universally regarded as beyond the pale -- hell, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley even recommended West as a possible running mate for Mitt Romney, before walking back the recommendation.

In a rational political culture, a major newspaper would treat a recommendation like this for the Secret Service job he way it would treat a recommendation that David Duke be given the gig, or the head of the New Black Panthers. Then again, in a rational political culture, a guy like Allen West couldn't have even been elected once.