The lesson of Robert Doggart is unmistakable.
We can find hate anywhere. We can find it in Syria, in Iran, in Russia, in Hixson and on Signal Mountain.
Signal Mountain - in Sequatchie County - was where Doggart, 65, spent his retirement days planning to burn down a mosque in a Muslim community known as Islamberg in Hancock County, N.Y., and kill the residents.
"We will be cruel to them," Doggart said of the people of Islamberg. "And we will burn down their buildings And if it gets down to the machete, we will cut them to shreds."
Doggart, a self-proclaimed ordained minister of the Christian National Church and a former TVA engineer, had been a congressional candidate just a few months before he started looking for would-be accomplices in terror.
Though Doggart, running as an independent against Republican incumbent Scott DesJarlais and Democrat challenger Lenda Sherrell, only received 6.4 percent of the Nov. 4, 2014, vote, he still fancied himself as a future politician - perhaps even president.
But the FBI caught wind of his dreadful plan to attack Islamberg, home to a small Muslim community of about 140 people about two hours northwest of New York City. Doggart, stirred up by a Fox News story, was mistakenly convinced that the community planned to poison a water supply. With court-approved wiretaps, the FBI began listening in on Doggart as he planned the attack and tried to recruit helpers.
On Thursday, after days of testimony and 16 hours of jury deliberation, Doggart was found guilty of solicitation to commit a civil rights violation, solicitation to commit arson of a building, and two counts of threat in interstate commerce.
He was not charged with terrorism because the federal government doesn't have a "catch-all" law punishing domestic terrorists.
How do you think that would fly had Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez - an American citizen who had grown up in Hixson, graduated from Red Bank High School and received an engineering degree at UTC - been wiretapped and arrested before he could open fire on two military installations here in Chattanooga on July 16, 2015?
Would anyone in Chattanooga be satisfied with Abdulazeez being charged only with solicitation to commit a civil rights violation?
Here's the thing, however. Abdulazeez likely would have been charged with attempted terrorism, because an FBI investigation eventually determined that the shootings were "motivated by foreign terrorist organization propaganda."
But how much difference is there really between foreign terrorist organization propaganda and right-wing nationalist or even liberal propaganda about foreign terrorist organization propaganda?
There needs to be a federal "catch-all" statute for domestic terrorism, as well as foreign terrorism. Or maybe terrorism is just a one-size-fits-all category of hate crime?
Unfortunately for five Chattanooga servicemen and their families, the similarities in these two hate cases ended with the fact that the FBI didn't pick up on the threat - foreign or domestic - that Abdulazeez presented. He wasn't found out, wiretapped or arrested before he committed a drive-by shooting at a recruiting center, then traveled to a U.S. Navy Reserve center and burst in firing. He shot seven people before he was killed by police in a gunfight. Four Marines died on the spot. A Navy sailor died later. A Marine recruiter and a police officer were wounded and survived.
In the meantime, we must all acknowledge that hate doesn't live in a vacuum. It must be nursed, and it is rarely nursed with no one noticing.
Those who must have noticed the nursing of Abdulazeez's hate and unbalance didn't report it. People died.
Those who noticed hate and unbalance in Doggart did report it. No one died.
Thank you.
Let us all take a lesson.