The Degree Of The Angle

How far "Right" is "far-right"? How about "Left"? Does one have to be a Republican to be a conservative? No. But that all seems to be changing, now that people with extreme "Right" AND "Left" viewpoints are literally attacking government buildings.

Michelle Malkin ranted about how the media are playing games.

A nutball shot two security guards at a Pentagon-area Metro station in D.C. yesterday.

As Patterico reports, he hated Bush and littered the Internet with 9/11 Truther rants.

But just as I passed on playing the blame game with the global warmicides earlier this week, I’m not playing MSNBC/NYTimes-style “gotcha” with this one, either.

Guess which party he registered under in 2005 and was actively registered under as of 2008?

DEMOCRAT.

For her, that pretty much seals the deal. After all, in her muddled mind, no one can have a radical change of political affiliation or take on a new point of view. Wait, isn't there a group of people that suddenly renounced both political parties and took up a new, radical, set of beliefs? Hey, it's the Tea Baggers.

Quite literally overnight, this grouping of people no longer referred to themselves Democrats or Republicans, they were "patriots" who rallied against the government and came up with wild, conspiracies and held up Glenn Beck as the second coming of Christ. So I think it's more than just a little disingenuous for Malkin to think that since John Patrick Bedell hadn't altered his voter registration card back in 2008 that that is ultimate signifier that he didn't hold extreme right-wing viewpoints.

Another Attacker With Right-Wing Views

But you'll only hear about his "Truther" standpoint.

Talking Points Memo has a full write-up of who John Patrick Bedell was.

The California man who opened fire last night outside the Pentagon was a property rights extremist who railed against the government's ability to "confiscate the resources of their citizens to fund schemes that need only be justified by lies and deception," and wanted to "eliminate the role of the government in education."...."Communist and socialist governments that abolished or disregarded private property," said Bedell in the recording, "created poverty, repression and murder on a truly enormous scale." But, he continued, "Even in the United States, however, there has been a continual erosion of protection of private property justified by the belief that government is an efficient instrument for the positive direction of society."

He made a recording of his views a few years back and posted them online. Not to sure how long the FBI will allow this link to remain up.

Again, I'm going to steer clear of calling this man a full-fledged Tea Bagger, even though his Right-Wing views on property rights and government in general do mesh quite nicely with what many within the Tea Bagger movement espouse.

And isn't it a nice coincidence that Fox"News" has taken to championing property rights this year.