Did we cover this one? Sarah Palin...

...once stated, "Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime."

There are some other people who also expect end time, many of them leaders in their own, sick right. Groupings of extremists, terrorists, the fringe of the fringe, whatever label you want to apply to them, also have leaders. Like their leaders, they believe that there is a grand process in action all around them, some secret information that only they are privy to through some divine act.

Most members of these groups end up the lemmings who follow the calls of a charismatic leader. For Al Qaeda it's Osama Bin Laden. Richard Butler was this leader for Aryan Nations. Dwight York is this leader for the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors. Tom Metzger has been this patriarch for racist skinheads in the United States. David Koresh was this leader for the Branch Davidians. Warren Jeffs, incarcerated head of the FLDS, is one of the more recent leaders to have made news.

One thing that seems to tie many extremists and their leaders together, and this applies to a radical Islamists who wage violent jihad, Klansmen who today target perceived illegal immigrants, militias that bomb government targets, Earth Liberation Front radicals who torch subdivisions for encroaching on animal habitats, or Nuwaubians who try to overtake counties in Georgia by infiltrating police and government positions, is the belief that there will be a grand culmination for their cause, and many, if not most, of their leaders, are convinced that the culmination will take place during their lifetimes. Actually many of them preach or prophecize that the end will occur at a given date in the near future. Many of these people also believe that they have some divine role in it all. And while delusionally thinking that they are to lead their people against the "forces of evil" in this struggle, most of them seem to believe that the conflict is inevitable.

Given that they have put their names on the lines proclaiming the nearing end, many of them default to doing their best to usher in this end.

So, while Palin does not wear a white sheet to neighborhood BBQs or build pyramids in her back yard like the Nuwaubians, she does harbor a deeply disturbing worldview of The Beginning and The End. Putting her in a position, second in command from the top of the (for the moment) most power nation on the planet, to exercise that worldview on a grand scale is f-ing insane.

The idea that she won't blink doubles the scariness of all of this and basically amplifies the collision course that the last 8 years has already set against the Islamic world.

Look, I am not equating Palin with terrorism or violent extremism. I'm only pointing out that her worldview, that the world will end in her lifetime, is as self-absorbed and deranged as any of the ideologies that drive morons in the white supremacist movement or the ones behind suicide bombings in Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, or wherever.

If you can say with a straight face that you believe that you will see Jesus walk the Earth, or that the world will end, in your lifetime, then you are not fit to lead a mass of people counting on you to see things rationally. You are much more fit to stroll down to your place of worship on the weekend and stroll right back to your abode, all the while keeping your beliefs to yourself and your community that agrees with you.

And when you step into the spotlight and run for office, expect to get hell for those beliefs.

Fair. Defend them all you like, stand by them if you have the guts, but don't expect to convert 300 million people to the same narrow-minded ways.