Editorial - Domestic Enemies
by Dave Bealer

Robert McNamara, who served as Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and
Johnson, admitted in his recent book that the U.S. involvement in
Vietnam may have been ill advised.  This confirms what a lot of 
people have been saying since the 1960s.  It also goes to show that
nobody is perfect, not even the people who run the most powerful
nation on earth.  In fact Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon, was so
imperfect that in 1974 he became the first President in U.S. history
to resign from office.

Vietnam and Watergate eroded American's respect for their govern-
ment, although there have always been some people suspicious of the
power and motives of Federal officials.  Recent efforts at gun
control have raised the paranoia level of those most worried about
their Second Amendment rights.  The deadly 1993 federal raid on the
Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas brought many of those
smoldering suspicions to the flash point.

On April 19, 1995 a car bomb destroyed a nine story Federal office
building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  Over 150 people, many of them
children, lost their lives in the attack.  Most of the dead were
federal workers, either civilian or military.  Like all those who
serve the Executive Branch of the United States in any capacity, from
the President on down, these people had taken an oath of office upon
entering federal service.  The most important phrase in all federal
oaths of office is a pledge to "Support and Defend the Constitution
of the United States against all Enemies, Foreign and Domestic."

Car bombings are not a new phenomenon, even in America.  Just two
years ago a car bomb, set by Middle Eastern fanatics, damaged the
World Trade Center in New York City.  Because of that attack many
people, including members of the news media, instantly assumed that
the Oklahoma City bombing had been perpetrated by Middle Eastern
terrorists.  This despite statements by Arabic and Muslim groups in
the U.S. condemning the attack, and cautioning against making rash
assumptions.  But this incident, the most deadly terrorist act ever
carried out on U.S. soil, was perpetrated by domestic enemies. 

The suspects in the atrocity in Oklahoma are ultra-conservative
fanatics who were apparently trying to punish the government for its
role in the Waco tragedy.  Are these paranoid people terrorists or
revolutionaries?  Most of them are pathetic losers who can't make 
it in modern society.  Whatever the real cause of their dysfunction,
they blame the government (really, anyone but themselves) for their
problems.  The government hasn't become any more perfect in the past
twenty years, but blowing up federal workers, their children, and
their customers is not the way to change things for the better.

The United States, model for all modern democracies, provides a way
to alter the government if you don't like the fit of the current one.
It's called voting a new one into office.  Many people felt the
system didn't work anymore, but in November 1994 they were proved 
wrong when voters gave the Republican party control of both houses of
Congress for the first time over 40 years.  That revolution will 
continue next year when the Republicans win the Presidency and the
(non-ultra) conservative agenda really starts to roll.

Americans have proven themselves quite capable of defending their
nation against foreign enemies.  Defending a truly free nation
against domestic enemies is far more difficult.  There will always be
people who oppose the government, no matter who is in charge.  For
all its faults, the U.S. system of government is the best one yet
devised by humans.  Those who use the system to change things
(including the system itself) are revolutionaries, those who attempt
to destroy the system are terrorists.  

Actually, the fanatics who set off the Oklahoma City bomb are guilty
of treason, since "levying war against them [the United States]" is
defined as treason in the Constitution.  Detonating two tons of high
explosives with the intention of destroying a government building and
killing innocent government and civilian personnel certainly qualifies
as "levying war," if anything does.  If the penalty for treason isn't
death by some very unpleasant method, it certainly should be.

Civil disobedience, up to and including violence, is an old American
tradition.  In fact that is how the nation gained independence from
its European masters in the 18th century.  America's Founding Fathers
tried to ensure that Americans would always have the means available
to defend themselves and their country, a very wise provision.  More
gun control is not the answer to the Oklahoma traitors.  Providing
and enforcing severe penalties against those who use firearms (and
other weapons) in the commission of violent crimes is the answer.

                              {DREAM}

Copyright 1995 Dave Bealer, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Dave Bealer is a thirty-something mainframe systems programmer who
works with CICS, MVS and all manner of nasty acronyms at one of the
largest heavy metal shops on the East Coast. He shares a waterfront
townhome in Pasadena, MD. with two cats who annoy him endlessly as he
writes and publishes electronically. Dave can be reached via e-mail
at: dbealer@dreamforge.com
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