A report on terrorism in the United States has been published by the Department of Homeland Security. The authors of the report are Gary LaFree, professor of criminology at the University of Maryland, and Bianca Bersani, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

The goal of the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) program is to sponsor research that will aid the intelligence and law enforcement communities in identifying potential terrorist threats and support policymakers in developing prevention efforts.

And what should law enforcement agencies be looking for when it comes to domestic terrorism? Americans “suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty” and protecting their personal freedoms are categorized as extreme right-wing terrorists. The study claims that “right-wing extremists” are “groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national ‘way of life’ is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent.”

Given this definition, our founding fathers were terrorists. A nice thought on July 4th.

I did a search of the words “Islam” and “Muslim” in the 37-page report. Islam came up once. Muslim does not appear at all. The new Executive Director of START is Bill Braniff. He is more concerned with “Islamophobia” than Islamic terrorism.

The section on “Religious” groups caught my attention:

Religious: groups that seek to smite the purported enemies of God and other evildoers, impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists), forcibly insert religion into the political sphere (e.g., those who seek to politicize religion, such as Christian Reconstructionists and Islamists), and/or bring about Armageddon (apocalyptic millenarian cults; 2010: 17). For example, Jewish Direct Action, Mormon extremist, Jamaat-al-Fuqra, and Covenant, Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) are included in this category.

This is an area in which I have some degree of expertise. In the above paragraph, the report mentions “Christian Reconstructionists.” I have been familiar with Christian Reconstruction for more than 30 years. In fact, I wrote the books The Debate over Christian Reconstruction and Christian Reconstruction: What It is. What It Isn’t (with Dr. Gary North). I know every well-known Christian Reconstructionist and own every Christian Reconstruction book ever published. (I have a personal library of 40,000 books.) It’s obvious that the authors of this report are not familiar with Christian Reconstruction. Reconstructionists do not believe in political change through terrorism or revolution.

I wonder if the authors read R. J. Rushdoony’s 1975 article, “Jesus and the Tax Revolt” that appeared in the Winter 1975/76 issue of The Journal of Christian Reconstruction. The article is a refutation of the tax protest movement.

As one Reconstructionist put it: “Our goal is persuasion, not revolution.”

So then, if you believe in liberty and freedom and distrust the government, then you might be a terrorist.