PB grandma admits that she's a terrorist

To the Editor,

I'm 69-year-old grey-haired grandmother. I'm furthermore crippled up with arthritis so much that it's difficult to walk very far. My back hurts, my feet hurt, my everything hurts. But apparently I'm also a dangerous "extreme right-wing" terrorist according to a new study, titled "Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970-2008," and conducted by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, and funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security. START has gotten roughly $12 million from DHS and is set to get another $3.6 million.

The study says right-wing extremists are people or 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." That's me. I respect individual liberty and feel that we are heading ever more in the direction of centralized federal authority.

In the START dataset's codebook, two subgroups of "right-wing extremism" were identified as "gun rights" and "tax protest," according to PJ Media.

So, according to START's codebook, "Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism in the United States" the facts that I happen to believe in the 2nd Amendment and in the fact that we are overtaxed, also make me a terrorist. I furthermore pay cash whenever I can for small things such as gas, groceries, restaurants, etc. According to the FBI's "Communities Against Terrorism" program, things such as the bulk purchase of food and paying with cash at a coffee shop are indicators for potential terrorist activity.

However, the Fort Hood shooter is classified as "workplace violence" after screaming "allah akhbar" while murdering our soldiers and the World Trade Center bombing wasn't even mentioned.

The definition of "terrorism" seems to be expanding at an alarming rate as the federal government and other left-leaning scholarly institutions are increasingly classifying seemingly harmless actions such as cherishing personal liberty and paying cash as potential terrorist activity.

I don't know whether to be happy and proud to be a potential terrorist or shocked and scared to death that the DHS men in the Brown Shirts may be coming to get me some night because I paid cash at McDonald's for a cup of coffee.

How about you? Are you "reverent of individual liberty? " Are you "suspicious of centralized federal authority?" Do you think there is a "grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty?" If so, you could be a terrorist also! Be careful when you get gas or coffee at the local gas mini-mart.

Ruthie Haynes Carter

Poplar Bluff, Mo.