Modern liberal extremists usually have some exaggerated and perverse historical justification for their crimes, resistance to oppressing bourgeois classes and championing of the oppressed masses, that sort of thing. Regicide or worse is rationalized by the "march of history", or the inevitability of the triumph of "scientific socialism" or "the will of the people", or some other such nonsense. Fortunately, American liberals tend to be of the limousine variety, mostly talk and very little action. For their part, the oppressed classes don't want revolution, they just want an invitation to the party.

Contemporary reactionary zealots, on the other hand, tap into a complex politico-religious mythology based on patriotism, nationalism, racialism, and a puerile confidence that the system they see as threatened will guarantee them personal success and validation, if only it weren't being subverted and infiltrated by traitors and foreign ideologies. Unlike the liberals, who see themselves as changing the world for the better by eliminating corrupt rulers, the conservatives visualize themselves as protecting a already perfect world from outside enemies who seek to seize (their) power. Every personal shortcoming or collective failure is interpreted as evidence that the conspiracy is gaining ground and must be stopped.

Unfortunately, unlike the liberals, many American conservatives are genuinely oppressed, they feel abandoned by a world that is changing, leaving them behind, and they perceive their inability to adapt or prosper as the result of subversive and alien ideologies, not the blind forces of history and their own inability to adjust to them. What they cannot see is that their major obstacle to self-actualization is not some liberal conspiracy, but the entrenched resistance of and systematic exploitation by the very same classes they seek entry to, or even claim past membership in. Those classes, naturally, do everything they can to propagate this point of view.

At least in our contemporary social milieu, the temptation to grab a weapon and kill the invader and thereby restore the idealized utopia that is slipping through their fingers is strong and tempting, especially to a culture indoctrinated by the cult of the firearm. The mythology is so firmly entrenched that it even spills over into popular entertainment--how does the typical Hollywood hero combat the undead, mummies, zombies, vampires, and other supernatural threats? He blows them away with an automatic weapon, of course! Even creatures who are already dead can be disposed of with sufficient firepower. So can those who threaten the American Way, whether they possess any real life or not.