Andrew Cohen: The Revival of the Extreme Anti-Government Right

[Andrew Cohen - Andrew Cohen has served as chief legal analyst and legal editor for CBS News and won a Murrow Award as one of the nation's leading legal analysts and commentators.]

Among other items of evidence seized from Timothy McVeigh's car when he was arrested 15 years ago next month outside of Oklahoma City was a papered quote from Samuel Adams. "When the government fears the people, there is liberty," the quote read. "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

Lest anyone remain unsure about McVeigh's motivations for the cold-blooded murder of 168 innocents at the Alfred P. Murrah federal building on April 19, 1995, the self-styled "patriot" wore to the attack a t-shirt with the Latin inscription: "Sic Semper Tyrannis" and the Thomas Jefferson line: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."...

That was then. This is now. Today, loose, dangerous talk about "government tyranny" is back in vogue (evidently its sinister design appears regularly during middling Democrat administrations but never during power-grabbing Republican ones) and on a political amptitude far beyond where it was during the Age of McVeigh a generation ago. Twenty-first century tyrants abound in the hearts of little old ladies at tea parties, in the minds of erstwhile government officials (who evidently aren't tyrants themselves) and on the lips of at least one outspoken spouse of at least one underspoken justice of the United States Supreme Court.

In other words, what the nation rejected as superheated lunacy and dangerous incitement out of McVeigh's mouth in 1995, tens of millions of Americans now praise as patriotism from popular figures. What the militia movement lost in support following McVeigh's attack it has gained a thousand times over by the current devolution in the language of dissent. Now, the nation's mainstream conservative forces routinely employ the overcharged language of "tyranny" and "tyrants," mongered as righteous fear and loathing by mainstream media outlets, in a way unthinkable back in the McVeigh's day....

Fifteen years ago, the face of that frustration was McVeigh. Today, the face looks very much different indeed, don't you think?