The West Point think tank known as the Combating Terrorism Center has issued a paper on the dangers posed by the far right in this country, specifically people who espouse “civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government,” and says that these people tend to be anti-federalist, white supremacist, and fundamentalist in their views.

According to the paper, liberalism, including that which is seen in other developed nations, looks forward to the future, while conservative movements, especially those here, look backward and cling to an idealized version of history. They also hold a belief that the government is inherently tyrannical and given to intruding on civil and constitutional rights as much as they can. According to the paper, these people initiated 350 attacks in 2011.

One of the core issues with the extreme right is that while they espouse individual freedom and like to try and spread fear regarding the government’s activities, they also seem to believe in a type of authoritarianism—one of the very things they profess to loathe in government—that includes a strong resistance to authority from what they view as “outgroups,” namely blacks and women, unions, and more.

They also seem to view the Constitution as a static document, unchanging despite the way society has changed over the last 230 years, and want laws made and judges to rule based on the original intent of the document. Here’s the issue with that: When it comes to the 2^nd Amendment (for example), the original intent of the amendment was to preserve slavery. The words, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” refer to the freedom of white men in the southern states to own slaves, and to police those slaves with their militias as they saw fit. The original intent was not to ensure the people’s freedom from a tyrannical government, which is what every gun-rights activist espouses today.

Given that slavery hasn’t existed here for more than 150 years, the original intent of the 2^nd Amendment is not applicable to today’s society. The extreme right, however, would argue that we are becoming slaves of the government, if we aren’t already, with anecdotes and paranoia fueling their claims.