roofguy
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posted on June 12, 2001 12:00:23 PM new
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice".
Goldwater said it, but he didn't mean it.
McVeigh took it seriously. 168 people died. 169 counting McVeigh.
One might suggest his action was motivated by the same emotional power which propelled the American revolution. That shooting a Redcoat and blowing up a federal building are closely related actions. Redcoats were people too.
That part of the analysis, difficult as it seems to accept, very much appears to be the case. McVeigh was motivated by an extremist defense of liberty.
We're left to explain why this is different. Why it was good to shoot Redcoats and bad to blow up federal buildings.
If we don't do such an analysis, and instead rely on the shallow analysis of "murdered 168 people, therefor evil", we risk McVeigh's life and death becoming a catalyst for more such actions and even movements.
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jamesoblivion
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posted on June 12, 2001 12:17:26 PM new
I find comparisons of the American Revolution and terrorism offensive. Redcoats were people but they were also soldiers. Soldiers are in the business of killing and sometimes being killed as well. Babies and office workers are not.
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krs
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posted on June 12, 2001 12:19:40 PM new
Yes, his motivations were throughout to take action against the infringements of an oppresive government that he believed had exceeded the bounds of it's charter. He is a hero to many right now, and actually fits very well into the revolutionary patriot description. Our history is based in actions such as his, not in detail, but in spirit. From what I can tell he cared very deeply about the conduct of his government and believed that not to take action against it's excesses would be traitorious to his beliefs in our founding principles.
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Femme
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posted on June 12, 2001 12:33:58 PM new
Very thought-provoking, Roofguy.
Yes, he acted on his principles. It's the target that is questionable.
Why not target the branch of the government responsible for Waco?
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krs
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posted on June 12, 2001 12:36:24 PM new
I think he did. The responsible FBI office was in that building in Oklahoma City as I heard once, long ago.
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Zazzie
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posted on June 12, 2001 12:45:01 PM new
It wasn't only soldiers who died in the Revoluntionary War. Civilians on both sides of the War were caught in it and died.
The question is why do some present day citizens feel that they are in need of another revolution??
I don't think that is the right question....maybe how is one man so warped as to think he needed to have his own revolution?
edited cause it needed it
[ edited by Zazzie on Jun 12, 2001 12:55 PM ]
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gravid
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posted on June 12, 2001 01:02:26 PM new
The American Revolution had all the murder and rape and confiscation of personal property you would expect of any revolution. The Loyalists who did not support the revolution were treated very roughly. Many fled the country for their lives leaving their hard earned land, homes, and businesses
behind. Ships full of them fled to Canada
I have read various figures but somewhere from 20% to 30% of the population did not support revolution and eventually about 50,000 fled to Canada.
See an interesting book on this:
http://users.erols.com/candidus/
Does anybody really expect them to teach that in public schools?
Why didn't Tim target the FBI or the BATF?
It would have been too hard with his limited resources. He would have never gotten close to a building dedicated to the sole use of an agency like the FBI. This way he hurt a large number of federal agencies and the building itself was a pretty expensive piece of real estate.
His thinking was military not civilian and collateral damage is a secondary consideration.
How many of you are comfortable in a federal building anymore? I sure won't be in one on the anniversary of his death or the bombing.
Not at all if I don't have a real need.
It is clear they are targets.
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gk4495
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posted on June 12, 2001 01:26:19 PM new
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." From the Declaration of Independence signed July 4, 1776 by the 56 members of the Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, PA.
I don't agree with his tactics. I don't condone his violence. However, no one can deny that our government is increasingly infringing upon the rights of its citizens. Our Bill of Rights is slowly eroded by court decisions and legislative posturing. Our privacy is habitually invaded or redefined. The more we expect the government to do for us, the more we must surrender to the will of that government and in so doing we lose a bit of what those men in Philadelphia sought to give us. Perhaps Tim focused on a part of the Declaration most of us didn't even know was there.
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Zazzie
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posted on June 12, 2001 01:37:24 PM new
Gravid---In Canada they are called "The United Empire Loyalists" and we learn all about them and their flight
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Microbes
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posted on June 12, 2001 02:31:32 PM new
By the theory some are using, War Criminal would be a better term than patriot.
Edited to add: Even in War, some things you don't target, daycares being one of them.
[ edited by Microbes on Jun 12, 2001 02:33 PM ]
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krs
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posted on June 12, 2001 02:44:52 PM new
Whatever his focus I don't think that he had suffered enough at the hands of his government to justify his act. He had returned but a few short years before to the accolades of the nation, a national hero, and he accepted those praises, perhaps even gloried in them.
He no doubt felt that he was a military man. But he left the military not because he was disallusioned with it's activities or purpose, but because he could not realize his goal to be a part of our Special Forces. He was disapointed in himself, and maybe resentful too, but the Waco slaughter could not have outraged him enough to bring him to revolt against a government that he had recently supported so energetically. As the soldier he claimed to be the Waco incident should have been seen by him just as the deaths in Oklahoma were; the fortunes of war-collateral damages. Why wasn't he as hard and matter of fact about Waco as he presented himself to be about Oklahoma?
What's left is a frustrated person striking out against the perceived cause of his own limitations and Waco only gave him a cause to adopt so that he could mask the reality of his inadequacies.
So sayeth Kenneth.
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kcpick4u
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posted on June 12, 2001 02:54:57 PM new
Pure coward! With complete disregard for the lives of the innocent. How could anyone consider him a champion of patriotic endeavers.
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roofguy
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posted on June 12, 2001 03:08:39 PM new
Zazzie writes: The question is why do some present day citizens feel that they are in need of another revolution??
There will ALWAYS be present day citizens who feel that we are in need of another revolution. Some will be communists, some will favor a right wing dictatorship, and some will imagine a period of anarchy after which their dreams will come true.
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Zazzie
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posted on June 12, 2001 03:11:39 PM new
So are there more bombings to be seen in the future?? Is that the way to attain your dreams??
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roofguy
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posted on June 12, 2001 03:21:19 PM new
kcpick4u writes: Pure coward!
I disagree, except that we reduce "coward" to be a slur.
With complete disregard for the lives of the innocent.
No argument there; this was the problem, of course.
How could anyone consider him a champion of patriotic endeavers.
Consider that Germany lives in great fear that the 56 year dead Hitler will be glorified as a German patriot, leading to a political revival of such ideas.
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roofguy
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posted on June 12, 2001 03:24:20 PM new
So are there more bombings to be seen in the future?? Is that the way to attain your dreams??
Bombings have been a tool of terrorists for over a hundred years. They all have some goal in mind.
[ edited by roofguy on Jun 12, 2001 03:24 PM ]
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gravid
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posted on June 12, 2001 04:37:54 PM new
So are there more bombings to be seen in the future?? Is that the way to attain your dreams??
Sure looks like a lot of people think that way.
Look at the bombings in Isreal and notice what they target there. Night clubs - markets - shopping areas - bus stops.
If they blow themselves up at a military check point it is usually because they got discovered before they could reach the target.
Sure is hard to see any long term benefit from terror bombing your adversary. Never heard of anyone surrendering from it. In Isreal it does not seem to be a tactic to drive them to the bargining table - just the opposite it seems a tactic when the hard liners are afraid they may attain a peace agreement to prevent that.
Sure would hate to live like that here.
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Borillar
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posted on June 12, 2001 11:05:35 PM new
I do not see McVeigh as a patriot. There is no honor in killing the defenseless. For McVeigh, he appearently saw the killing of practically defenseless Iraqi soldiers as just the same as workers in the federal building he blew up. That he targeted a defenseless, non-millitary outpost is not an act of bravery. If he had instead blown-up the Congress building while it was in full-session, then he would have been making a political statement. But all too often, the real troublemakers never get caught because of their high political office and it is the common person who almost always pays the price.
Personally, I think that McVeigh was mentally insane. Note his complete lack of judgement about targets, along with Terry Nichols. An idiot leading the mentally unstable.
edited for sp.
[ edited by Borillar on Jun 12, 2001 11:07 PM ]
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gravid
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posted on June 12, 2001 11:28:53 PM new
You do have a point there - because his manner is not normal having a blank face with no normal variation of expression.
I am sure that there was never any chance that the government would have allowed a insanity defense even if he were a full blown delusional case hearing voices and replying to them. On a case of this scale they have to deliver up someone to blame.
Combat does teach many to kill without remorse. Then all those people come home.
Maybe in a strange way those dead are as a result of the gulf if we knew the full chain of events.
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SnowyEgrEt
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posted on June 13, 2001 05:47:34 AM new
Do the ends justify the means?
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codasaurus
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posted on June 13, 2001 05:52:19 AM new
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...
I think that the order those words were written in was not arbitrary.
If a "patriot" in the American lexicon is defined as "One who loves, supports, and defends one's country" and the document that helped create our country placed Life before Liberty as the paramount right granted us by our creator, then I fail to see how anyone can view McVeigh as a patriot.
Patriots do not, I think, destroy the fundamental rights of others in the pursuit of an ancillary right of their own.
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krs
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posted on June 13, 2001 06:33:24 AM new
Timothy McVeigh had a mind control implant placed by the Federal government while he was in the army.
http://www.sightings.com/general2/truth.htm
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uaru
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posted on June 13, 2001 06:44:12 AM new
I'm sure some feel Oswald, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan are patriots. Any group that uses McVeigh as a posterboy is making a mistake.
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krs
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posted on June 13, 2001 07:00:28 AM new
Seen as "one who loves, supports, and defends his country" McVeigh fills the bill IF it can be seen that there are positions which do not believe that the actions of this government meet the requirements as designed in original documents. When a system of government moves from the ideals which founded this country it is often seen to have no validity under the constitution. Government and the associated official actions are not necessarily country.
To posit that 'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' are elements upon which this country was founded and continues to support does not leave room for the wanton destruction of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by action of the government in place. How, for example can those principles support the enslavement of a people or the virtual destruction of a native race and culture? Or does it read "OUR life, liberty, and the pursuit of OUR happiness" at the expense of all others, and WE will define what elements to include in "OUR"?
In McVeigh's own words the hypocrisy of such a position is described:
http://www.kwtv.com/news/bombing/mcveigh-essay.htm
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krs
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posted on June 13, 2001 07:04:28 AM new
uh, in case you haven't heard, Oswald was a patsy and seven shots were fired at RFK while Sirhan's pistol held only six.
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uaru
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posted on June 13, 2001 07:16:53 AM new
uh, in case you haven't heard, Oswald was a patsy and seven shots were fired at RFK while Sirhan's pistol held only six.
Conspiracy theories sell a lot of books.
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fred
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posted on June 13, 2001 07:23:15 AM new
McVeigh, and dipsticks like him, suffer from Delusions of Grandeur.
Fred
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krs
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posted on June 13, 2001 07:25:49 AM new
If you had ever seen a head hit by a high power rifle shot you would know that a shot in the back of the head does not cause the brains to explode out the back. Exactly the opposite occurs. Since Oswald was supposedly positioned behind the motorcade no shot that he fired could possibly have caused the massive wound at the rear of Kennedy's head as shown in the Zapruder film. Kennedy's kill shot came from in front and to his right. Oswald was not in front and to the right. The U.S. Congress in 1978 concluded that Kennedy's death 'probably' resulted from the bullets from more than one rifle.
Your conspiracy is contained in the Warren report.
There were seven bullets recovered from either Robert Kennedy or from the walls and a doorframe in that hallway or whatever it was. The fatal shot was fired from at least two feet below the filmed position of Srhan's pistol.
edited to add that I do not know why uaru broaches this off topic discussion
[ edited by krs on Jun 13, 2001 07:27 AM ]
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mark090
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posted on June 13, 2001 08:39:42 AM new
Why do people like McVeigh and other low-brained mouth-breathers think we need another revolution. Because they are too damn lazy to get off their tuckuses and get involved in improving the system. They continually state that their vote or involvment doesn't count. But go out and buy a clue fools, which came first, the chicken or the egg. Did their non-involvement make them ineffectual or did them being ineffectual make them stop being involved. It was probably their laziness. Besides, blowing things up achieves their absolute primary objective, Dan Rathers says your name.
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krs
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posted on June 13, 2001 08:49:25 AM new
Agreed. Their problem is that they can't muster support in voting ppower to affect the changes that they think are needed. It's very like an EO call for boycott of ebay--much shouting by a very small percentage of users while the remainder are satisfied with the way things are.
The so called revolutionaries, militiamen, whatever they chose to call themselves use parts of old documents as a crutch in touting their personal discontent.
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