Something I Wrote In 1995

Last summer I was a witness to a drive-by-shouting.

I was attending the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association in Minneapolis. It was early in the morning, I had just picked up my name tag and was going to spend some time at a downtown newsstand. As I left the convention center a white Honda sped past and an emaciated college-age girl stuck her head out the window and shouted "KILLERS!"

I took this as an instance of the kind of mindless posturing that is indulged in by the walking brain-death cases that one finds on university campuses. At the time it was amusing. Had such an incident occurred in the days following the bombing of Oklahoma City, I would have found such an incident to be frightening.

In the wake of the bombing there has been in electronic and print media a major campaign to smear gun-owners and to blame the patriot militias for the bombing. In one case, "Day One," a televised "news magazine" attempted to link The RESISTER with such sub-sapient garbage as the so-called Aryan Nations. No assertion was too absurd in the effort to dehumanize any citizen who thought for himself, and accepted personal responsibility for the safety of himself, his family and his country.

Those citizens or groups such as the NRA who ask that the United States be governed in a constitutional and civilized manner are demonized as hatemongers. Accurate descriptions of the character and conduct of the president and of certain anti-constitutional federal agencies are dismissed as paranoid, weird and outrageous. Objections to the further repressive measures demanded by the attorney general and the FBI are denounced as hysteric. Calls for justice for the scores of American citizens murdered at the hands of federal officers are simply blanked-out.

The Star-Tribune of Minneapolis on its Sunday editorial page of 30 April, 1995, has scapegoated the NRA for the bombing of Oklahoma City. In total defiance of reason it declares:

[T]he Oklahoma City bombing is a bloody shirt that the NRA and lots of others are going to have to wear for a long time.

This is beyond appalling, this is beyond outrageous, to anyone who understands the lessons of history it is absolutely frightening.

The Star-Tribune (and the media establishment in general) continues to show it's long standing hatred of the intellectually and morally independent, and of the men and women who accept the full responsibilities of American citizenship. In imputing guilt to the innocent it shows it's continued contempt for justice.

I am afraid that in scapegoating patriots and in endorsing the expansion of federal power, the Star-Tribune and others in the electronic and print media have taken more steps toward the construction of a American Auschwitz.
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