From Crowley's March 31 Washington Times column, titled, “Enemies of the state: Administration smears some opponents, arrests others”:

Not surprisingly, then, once they had passed their widely unpopular health care bill, the Democrats moved quickly to delegitimize opposition to it. Their defiant move in the face of overwhelming popular resistance gave them another excuse to equate big-government progressives with good patriots and small government advocates with potentially violent nutcases who must be watched.

As if on cue, this week, Homeland Security, the FBI and the Department of Justice's Joint Terrorism Task Force carried out raids against a purported “Christian militia group” in the Midwest. According to reports, nine people have been charged with plotting to kill police officers with “weapons of mass destruction.” The indictment describes the group as an “anti-government extremist organization” and the FBI special agent in charge, Andrew Arena, cast it as “radical and fringe.” That may be, but the description has a conveniently familiar ring to it.

Interestingly, the head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Dawud Walid, rushed to announce the raids at a CAIR banquet at about the same time the story became public. “We salute the FBI for breaking up a militia that was seeking to harm American Muslims,” he said. It's curious that he would know that at a time when the FBI still had the investigation under seal. (We're still waiting to hear why Homeland Security and the FBI chose to use the descriptive word “Christian” when they seem unable to use the word “Muslim” in connection with Islamic extremism.)

It's mind-blowingly coincidental that these raids on a supposedly “Christian” militia group would come at the exact moment that Democrats were trying to change public opinion on Obamacare by claiming persecution by their opponents. They have cast Tea Partiers, conservatives, independents, Christians and militia members as all cut from the same unstable, volatile cloth. How can anyone take their opposition to the Democrats' agenda seriously when they're toting guns and being raided by Homeland Security and the FBI? They're all nuts, don't you know?

The Democrats handle dissent by isolating it, smearing it and delegitimizing it in order to crush it. The warning should be clear: If you have small-government, traditional values, you may be considered by your own leadership to be an enemy of the state.