By the People

"[T]he greatest threat we face today is not terrorists; it is our own federal government."

Richard Mack

At the core of modern Western democracy is John Locke’s ideal of government by the consent of the people. Locke had a profound influence upon those who drafted the American Constitution, a document that enacted the British philosopher’s Liberal ideas.
How does any country, founded upon such liberal principles, arrive at a time in its history where ‘the people’ are not only ready to take up arms, but actually doing so with the stated intent of overthrowing the constitutional government any time they feel it necessary?
As far as the United States is concerned, it bred this dissension in the Petri dish of its own experiment. Article 1, Section 8 grants Congress the power to call “forth the Militia”, thereby granting Americans the right to form the Militia upon which Congress may feel the need to call. As it is not easy to imagine a true Liberal forming military-style groups – by definition, the average Liberal would likely have a far wider range of activities to keep them occupied over the weekend – it isn’t hard to understand why these militants tend to be right-wing.
In something close to counterintuitive, the right-wing would wish less power of government in their lives while the left-wing would accept more in so far as it served the needs of the people. Yet, right-wing governments tend to be far more Draconian – or down right Fascist -  than those formed from the left. Exhibit One: the current White House.
Terrorism from the Left is not unknown. Harken back to the Sixties and Seventies when the Weathermen and the Black Panthers – and their off-shoot, The Black Liberation Army – had their day of bombings. Now I am no student of terrorism and neither am I American, but it would seem that left-wing terrorism went into abeyance throughout the Eighties, Nineties and right up to James T. Hodgkinson III’s (though it’s likely he was just some kook with little understanding of which political direction he was coming from) shooting of Congressional Republicans while at Baseball practice.
It seems logical, therefore, that any discussion of home-grown terrorism would have right-wing extremists as its focus. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombings would seem to substantiate such a focus. At their height, the left-wing never would have dreamt of an atrocity so large. The right breeds a degree of extremism unimaginable to the liberal imagination.
Equally unimaginable would be the bio-toxin at play in 'The Pine Bluff Variant'. Of course, the implication of this episode is that, while a left-wing government would repudiate terrorism of any stripe, the right may be willing to entertain the possibility of calling on the militia to carry out actions the government would need 'plausible deniability' on.
The current war of words between POTUS and NFL/NBA players only serves to support the view that the right-wing is less tolerant and forgiving than the left. Not to mention the right’s determination to kill off literally millions of Americans by repealing ‘Obamacare'.
Yet those militia who would willingly take up arms against their own government are likely the very people who voted for the current incumbent of the White House. They too would willingly kill their fellow Americans for a fundamental idea not too dissimilar to those who flew the planes into the World Trade Center back in 2001.
Fundamental extremism has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with politics.
Politics is every bit a matter of faith as is religion. The difference is, religion learns. Religion adapts. Religion ages with the culture which supports it. Politics remains a matter of human need and conviction and will always drive the inadequate to acts of extreme violence. It is the only voice the inarticulate have.