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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe Btfsplk who wrote (8729)	2/27/1998 6:28:00 PM
From: Janice Shell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20981

To some extent they are the creation of a government that continually insists on using big sticks to stupidly poke hornet's nests. I agree that Waco was stupid. But the militias aren't the creation of the government: they're the creation of lunatics like the Unabomber. Let's not turn 'em into Bambi. Condemn the Feds all you like, but we as a people are forever screaming that "something must be done". About whatever: Khomeini, Ghaddafi, Saddam. We must always Take Action. In many cases it only makes things worse, but never mind, we must appear to be Decisive. What rubbish.

To: Joe Btfsplk who wrote (8729)	2/28/1998 12:49:00 AM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 20981

Issues like the militia movement quickly bring out the moderate in me, George. While I am simply disgusted by what I see as the greed and hypocrisy of the Clintons, I am made much more uncomfortable by extremists on the right--not intellectual conservatives like we have here at the Boinking thread, but the people like the militia movement and the Christian far right who are about, variously, anarchy, racial discrimination and violence, taking our civil rights away, and telling everyone exactly how to live. I read a very interesting book review recently about the militia movement. I just spent about twenty minutes trying to find it on the net so you could read it, and have given up, but the author of the book theorized that the militia movement was full of working class white men who felt powerless in this rapidly changing society that had left them behind economically, and that they were acting out that powerlessness in a fairly typical, pathological, manner. The author asserted that many of them were descendants of small farmers who had been marginalized during this century, as farming became economically less viable as a way to make a good living. I did not read the book, and do not know if I agree with him totally, but I think his ideas are worth considering. I don't think anarchy is a particularly constructive form of government, nor is terrorism. What I was saying originally is that events like Waco and Ruby Ridge fuel and polarize these movements, and that is sad. I do not believe, however, that the government is generally out to get people, and think that these are fairly rare occurrences.