By Mark Bauer/se news editor

Running with scissors, touching a hot stove, prancing across a busy interstate, hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney—these are all things I would consider dangerous.

And rightly so. Their track record has either proved the aforementioned activities as dangerous, or our mothers warned us that they were.

But those are just a few of the items on my list of dangerous things to avoid. So I was pleasantly surprised when, a little over a year ago, Rosie O’Donnell said radical Christians were just as dangerous as radical Islamists.

Surely she must be referring to the likes of David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidians, and his ilk. Or maybe she was referring to the abortion clinic bombers of the ’90s, who even then were an exception to the rule—not the norm.

And to what degree are these radical Christians dangerous? They were equated with terrorists who associate themselves with the jihad. But at last check, I have not detected any such attempt by American evangelicals to declare a holy war on any country, state or region.

However, this perception is nothing new. Jesus, on whom the Christian faith is centered, was arrested and sentenced to death on the basis that he was a threat.

Yet, this is the guy who stepped between a scandalous woman and an angry mob and declared that any man without sin was to cast the first stone.

Today, Jesus wouldn’t even register as a bleep on the Bush administration’s color-coded terror alert radar.

Even still, much of the secularist community would have us believe Christians do indeed pose an imminent threat to our rights as American citizens. Just sit back and watch the war that ensues between the use of the holiday greetings “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays.” The entertainment factor rivals that of the UFC ultimate fighting series.

Regardless of what label you tack onto the word radical, you have to wonder if it’s radical-anything that is actually to blame.

But extremism does not have a color, a creed or a face. Nay, extremism bears no such mark, no single identifiable feature. Nor does extremism discriminate based on sex, color, national origin or religious belief.

Extremism exists in the hearts and minds of all human beings seeking to advance their cause at whatever the cost.

So long as people exist to think their belief right and supreme—whether real or imagined—extremism will continue to rear its ugly head.