I read that article; its an amazing piece of journalism. I had heard of this Skousen as Beck's idol, but I really didn't know anything about him. Really gives some perspective about why GB always has those silly white boards and how everything always points back to Hitler and Communists (without regard for the fact that Hitler and Stalin were sworn enemies, of course). Fringe groups are always going to exist; I think its a way for people to consciously escape reality. In that way, the rise of the fringe into the mainstream over the last decade make sense. The entire Right Wing ideology has been basically defunct by the educated class, so people are retreating farther to the right as a defense mechanism, a way to hold onto what they've believed to be true their entire lives. There was an interesting study done in the late 80s where a group of psychologists showed that if judges are reminded of their mortality prior to deciding the bond in prostitution hearing, the average bond is set 9 times higher (the originals authors summarize the work starting on pg. 26 here: http://plaza.ufl.edu/phallman/terror%20management%20theory/3... ). This seems to be in keeping with the current rise in extremism. When one's world view is overthrown, its akin to being reminded of your own mortality in an abstract way, since when we die we can take solace in the fact that our life's works will still live; kill the culture, and you've prevented eternal life, perhaps. Maybe this is BS, but I don't think so.