Reply #471: Oh, I'm totally chill

[Goldmund]

and the reason I said what I said isn't because I think that you're the next McVeigh, but because I think that you should be aware of what that rhetoric suggests.

The context of your remark was your military pledge. The military doesn't fight its battles by "voting against" or benignly "working for the defeat" of its enemies. I know that's what YOU plan to do. But the "domestic enemies" in your military pledge doesn't refer to political opponents that you plan on "fighting" by voting against them.

Yes, of course the Constitution warns us that enemies don't always come from the outside. It's also a piece of consitutional rhetoric that has been misused more than probably any other. If there is ever true-blue fascism in America, its justification will be that exact rhetoric (not to mention McCarthy, etc). So invoking this "domestic enemy" phrase in general makes me nervous, whoever does it; it only makes me truly un-chill when conservatives do it, because they're the only ones around here with fascist tendencies... But liberals shouldn't adopt or associate with that rhetoric either -- because in a back-handed way that gives it life.