Anti-Government Militia Groups on the Rise, Law Center Says

Depending on your perspective, the rise of private, anti-government militias represents either the very best of American patriotism or is an ominous sign of a violent future. Last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report showing that the militia movement is returning to levels not seen since the 1990s, when a series of high-profile stand-offs with federal agents culminated in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people. According to the SPLC, the number of people who have joined what it terms "hate groups" has increased by 54 percent since the year 2000.

The SPLC identified 926 hate groups active in 2008, up more than 4 percent from the 888 groups in 2007 and far above the 602 groups documented in 2000. A list and interactive state-by-state map of these groups can be viewed here.

So why the rise in modern-day militia activity (be it termed "hateful" or not)?

"Barack Obama's election has inflamed racist extremists who see it as another sign that they are under siege by non-whites," said Mark Potok, editor of Intelligence Report, a quarterly investigative journal that monitors the radical right. "The idea of a black man in the White House, combined with the deepening economic crisis and continuing high levels of Latino immigration, has given white supremacists a real platform on which to recruit."

The origins of the American militia movement date back to the 1700s, and the movement was formalized in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Thus, there is no separating the concept of a militia from weaponry. The tricky part comes in discerning what constitutes "being necessary to the security of a free State." When one's love of country morphs into a desire to take up arms against those who have been freely elected to run it, the government -- as it did back in the '90s -- steps in to infringe on the right to bear arms.

When the Department of Homeland Security recently de-classified its report warning of the dangers in an uptick of right wing extremist groups, many critics blasted the agency for selectively singling out those of a particular political persuasion. After a spate of shootings, including one at the U.S. Holocaust Museum carried out by an avowed white supremacist and self-declared enemy of Barack Obama, the DHS findings didn't seem so far-fetched. The Southern Poverty Law Center's report covers much of the same ground.

One can hope that its conclusions are not born out by anything more than an increase in militia membership.