By Norman Kelley

Big government . . . government takeover . . . the loss of liberty and freedom at the hands of an ever- expanding government: these are among the recurring themes from those who oppose nearly any policy launched by the Obama administration.

These signature themes are often pushed by TV and talk radio performers like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, some of the “tea party” demonstrators, and most certainly by media outlets such as Fox News, the Drudge Report or the World Net Daily. And let’s not forget the thousand points of hate coming from lesser-known talk radio hosts and the viral internet.

However, the very fear of big government may cause an entity of the federal government to change its mission — and perhaps even get bigger in the process. Bryan Bender’s Boston Globe article on mission creep at the U.S. Secret Service is a case in point. Bender writes that “the unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama, a rise in racist hate groups, and a new wave of antigovernment fervor threaten to overwhelm the US Secret Service” even as it struggles to “investigate financial crimes such as counterfeiting as part of its original mandate.” As a result,

some officials, both inside and outside the agency, [are raising] the possibility of the service curtailing or dropping its role in fighting financial crime to focus more on protecting leaders and their families from assassination attempts and thwarting terrorist plots aimed at high-profile events.

So, what’s driving this? Ironically, the very people and organizations who are so suspicious of big government. The Southern Poverty Law Center says that antigovernment militias and white supremacist groups have strengthened in recent years, responding to an increasingly diverse population and what they see as an expanding government. A study issued by the center in August found a nearly 35 percent growth in racially-based domestic hate groups since 2000 – from 602 to 926, and it concluded that opposition to Obama’s election has only increased the phenomenon:

A key difference this time is that the federal government – the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy – is headed by a black man . . . one result has been a remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama.

The Globe’s Bryan Bender adds:

Threatening language has also found its way into talk radio broadcasts and social networking websites, raising fears that individuals not normally considered threats to the president could be incited to violence.

President Obama often tries to elide the racial animus directed at him since he became the country’s chief executive, but it is there. Because of the potential threats, the Secret Service, formerly of the Treasury Department and now part of Homeland Security, may have to focus more on providing security rather than investigating financial crimes. However, the financial crimes would still have to be covered by other government agencies.

Which brings us to the biggest irony: the increase in antigovernment rhetoric – spewed forth by the likes of Limbaugh, Beck and even some members of Congress – may well lead the U.S. Secret Service to expand its security staffing in order to monitor the hatred directed at America’s president by his countrymen. So the talkers opposed to “Big Government” are making at least one government agency bigger. Talk about unintended consequences…

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