[+/-] Let's just kill all the liberals

Back from a red-state jaunt, David Neiwert of Orcinus writes about the right-wing's eliminationist rhetoric:

[I]t is now becoming a commonly spoken sentiment on the right to wish for violence against liberals and to simultaneously suggest they and all "traitors" (including Muslim Americans) should be locked away....

Now, you won't hear this talk on the upper levels of the conservative movement.... You hear it when conservatives -- especially those red-state cultural conservatives from the working class who are most likely to vote against their own self-interest, and then blame liberals for how lousy their lives are -- get together among themselves for their communal liberal-bashing hatefests. They'll say it when they think no one else is listening. You can hear it from "fringe" radio figures like Michael Savage. Or you can read it in the unpublished letters to the editor that most publications choose not to run....

My very clear impression of the rank-and-file American right is that many if not most of them, at the behest of their leaders, now believe that opposing George W. Bush and the Iraq War, as well as his handling of the War on Terror, is an act of genuine treason worthy of the ultimate social condemnation, including incarceration and execution. They feel not only vindicated but profoundly empowered by the election result, empowered to silence their opposition, by force if need be.

I absolutely agree that eliminationism is on the rise in America, but only on the right; I know of no lefties writing about how all the wingnuts are traitors and demanding that they be shot. But those wingnuts, damn. Tom Corbett, for example, equated a vote for Kerry as equivalent to treason. Or check out this post by Adam Teiichi Yoshida from 2003:

The enemy we are facing has several columns. Of these, the fifth is the strongest.... In these days of danger, the old divisions of party and ideology have become almost meaningless. There are but two parties now: patriots and traitors. Active opposition to this war is treason, and nothing less.

Note how anyone who dissents is an enemy: not wrong-headed, not stupid, an enemy. You don't compromise with enemies: you rout, defeat and kill them. That is exactly what Yoshida suggests:

Sometimes I think that the treason is so deeply ingrained in our society that nothing short of martial law, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the repeal of Posse Comitatus will do. Sometimes I think that we will need to think to the Revolution, where Tories and other traitors were dealt with harshly by a righteous people.... This is too important to be dealt with civilly. Civility will bring us only defeat.... [W]e need to drive anti-war sentiments underground by making it difficult to be anti-war. For example, if you know for a fact that the owner of a small business is opposed to the war, look for ways to hurt that specific small business.

Yesterday I reported the news that Bush Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries. World War II had the Japanese Internment; will the "War on Terra" have an "Muslim Internment?" If so, do you doubt that a "Liberal Internment" would follow?