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Attention Federal Anti-Terrorism Authorities: I, too, felt horrified by our government's actions at the Branch Davidian compound. It never before occurred to me that the way to prevent child abuse was to have the children barbecued by the FBI. Must be one of those lessons we learned in Vietnam -- destroy the village in order to save it.
In addition, I have publicly supported various provisions of our Bill of Rights, among them the rights of free speech and press, the right to bear arms, the right to worship deities other than Mammon and the right to be secure in your home.
Further, my wife grew up in Michigan, home of one militia, and the last time I left this state, I went to Arizona, another militia hotbed. Last weekend I was in Gunnison County, where some Davidians may have fled. I live in Chaffee County, where the Fuqua sect was allegedly stockpiling arms.
Around my premises, I see equipment that could be used for, well, whatever. For instance, there's an old Tandy 100 laptop computer. Attach the primitive cassette-recorder connector to a relay wired to a detonator, program the computer to close the relay at a certain time, and presto, a big-time terrorist device, right up there with that VCR that didn't have tapes.
Having thus confessed, I expect to be questioned as our
federal government, always eager to find an excuse to
expand its power, cracks down on terrorist threats in
response to the attack on the Heartland.
The main result of the Oklahoma City bombing will be a
further erosion of whatever inalienable
rights we
might still exercise. Put wiretaps on everybody. Outlaw
cash so there's always a credit-card paper trail to trace.
Install more undercover informers, and if they don't turn
up enough indictments, they can become provocateurs and
justify their presence on the public payroll.
The focus on the Heartland angle has some odd implications. One is that we might understand somebody setting off a bomb in an important place like New York, Washington or Los Angeles, but Oklahoma City?
Another implication is that the Heartland was a refuge, somehow immune from terror and violence until last week.
That must be why the Cherokee moved to Oklahoma from Georgia in 1839. Odd that they called their migration route the Trail of Tears, but maybe they did feel safer there after terrorists -- no, make that hard-working American land speculators -- attacked them.
Perhaps the Cheyenne and Arapaho also felt safer in
Oklahoma after they moved there in 1867, a couple of years
after terrorists -- no, make that a joint anti-terrorism
task force -- attacked their homes in a pre-dawn raid and
butchered women and children at Sand Creek in Colorado
Territory. The children had to go because nits make
lice,
and as for the women, their breasts and
genitalia, once removed and tanned, made for distinctive
tobacco pouches.
Even when you ponder only terrorist bombing, it's hardly a novelty in this Heartland sanctuary.
On July 6, 1904, dynamite exploded under the railroad depot at Independence in the Cripple Creek District. Thirteen men died and dozens more were seriously injured. The former governor of Idaho was killed by a bomb in 1905. In 1908, a mine manager's house in Telluride was bombed.
These actions, of course, were roundly denounced as acts of terrorism, and the perpetrators -- as well as anyone who had ever expressed sympathy with the notion that there was something wrong with a system that paid men $2.50 for a back-breaking 12-hour day while the mine owners cavorted in their private railroad cars -- were summarily rounded up, imprisoned, and sometimes even tried.
The word terrorism does not describe a heinous act. Instead, it describes the actor.
If our government performs the act -- say, mowing down women and children at Ludlow, or shooting down a civilian airliner in the Persian Gulf, or providing arms to thugs in Guatemala, or killing an unarmed woman with her baby in Idaho -- then it's a matter of preserving national security, and we should all sleep better at night.
But if anybody else does such things, then it's an act of terrorism, and we should all feel fearful and ask that same government to protect us.
So, how should our government respond to the brutal and senseless act in Oklahoma City?
It could try cleaning up its own act. No more undercover informant-provocateurs. Quit contriving threats, especially at budget time. No more domestic raids with tanks and machine guns, sharpshooters and poison gas.
Do I want to live among dingbat white supremacist gold-standard tax-hating gun-lovers? No. They frighten me, and I wish they'd go away.
But I don't feel nearly as threatened by them as I do by
a superpower government which feels free to ignore its own
rules in the guise of protecting us. As Benjamin Franklin
once observed, They that can give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty
nor safety.
If he was wrong, then the government should take his picture off the $100 bill. If he was right, then we should heed his words.
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