James Madison. Benjamin Franklin. Samuel Adams. Thomas Jefferson.

Be on the lookout for them and their shady cohorts. By today's standards, and according to a warning issued this week by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, they are "right-wing extremists." Quite likely armed and most dangerous in their independent thinking.

According to one account, Homeland Security's warning for the country's law enforcement officers this week included a note that a rise in right-wing extremism could include "groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority."

Is there any question that our Founding Fathers would be considered right-wing extremists today?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is obviously one, too. The FBI might want to watch this guy.

After all, check out this alarming headline from KHOU-TV in Houston: "Gov. Perry supports 10th Amendment."

This guy is full of dangerous ideas.

Just consider what the 10th Amendment says: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Surely our Founding Fathers didn't mean that, even as extreme as they were.

Then again, maybe they did. And maybe Gov. Perry's on to something.

"I believe that our federal government has become oppressive," the governor said this week. "I believe it's become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens and its interference with the affairs of our state."

He's right, of course. By no measure is the federal government following its dictates in the Constitution.

But his recognition of that, and his support of a Texas House resolution along those lines, is bound to be controversial.

Because he supports the Constitution and expects it to be followed. That's extreme today. Radical. Fringe.

Sadly, all those who support traditional American values today are pilloried in the "mainstream" media and are considered extremists. If so, then our Founding Fathers were extremists too.

We think that's pretty darned good company to keep.

In fact, notes author Ben Shapiro, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison argued that states "were duty-bound to resist action by the federal government superseding its allotted authority under the Constitution."

It was recently brought to our attention by a careful reader of the Constitution that the preamble to the Constitution says the point of the federal government is, in part, to "provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare ..." Note the difference in wording. "Provide" means to do it. "Promote" means to encourage it; "promote" doesn't mean the government should "provide" anything.

We know they were blinded by right-wing extremism and all, but no one has ever accused the Founding Fathers of using language inartfully. We think they intended precisely what they wrote.

Yet, some two centuries later, that "general welfare" clause -- and the 10th Amendment sharply curtailing the power of the federal government in domestic affairs -- are the two most-abused portions of our Constitution.

And those who see that and stand up to say it are considered extreme.