Cause and effect?

One year ago, after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in which more than 100 people were killed, many searched for explanations as to how anyone could commit such a horrible act. The explosion produced a second wave of post-mortems on the mass deaths at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the siege at Ruby Ridge in Idaho where Randy Weaver and FBI agents exchanged gunfire that left three people dead. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were quick to blame conservative talk radio for contributing to a climate that produced these violent acts. They were supported by many editorial writers and some columnists. People like G. Gordon Liddy, who told listeners how to defend their property and themselves if federal agents came calling, were said to be nurturing radicals like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the accused Oklahoma City bombers. But these talk radio hosts were not alone. The new Republican majority in Congress was also at fault because they criticized big government. Since the crazies responsible for Waco, Oklahoma City, and Ruby Ridge also distrusted the government, Republicans must be considered unindicted co-conspirators with talk radio. However, it was never established that Mr. Weaver, Mr. McVeigh, or David Koresh ever listened to talk radio or read or heard a single speech by Newt Gingrich. Carrying this "logic" to the latest extreme, if conservatives are to blame for Waco, Oklahoma City, and Ruby Ridge, who is responsible for producing Theodore Kaczynski, the prime Unabomber suspect? Liberals. Mr. Kaczynski went to an Earth First! meeting at the University of Montana where a "hit list" of "enemies" of the environment was distributed. Environmentalism is usually associated with people of liberal political persuasion. Two of the individuals on the Earth First! hit list were killed by bombs presumed to have been mailed by Mr. Kaczynski. Mr. Kaczynski attended Harvard, generally considered an institution of liberal political and social thought. Were his radical views incubated on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge? He also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, the mecca of liberalism in the '60s. Since many liberals attempted to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between speech and action, where are their cries against radical extremism now that one of their own has been implicated in the horrid deed of bombs by mail? Why not denounce liberal institutions that turn out people like this? Where are the warnings about Earth-Firsters who see the planet as something sacred and those they claim violate it as infidels worthy of death? Weren't we told last year that Oklahoma City, Waco, and Ruby Ridge were caused by radical Christian fundamentalists and conservative fanatics? Where are the comparisons between radical religious and liberal fanaticism and the Unabomber? Only ABC's Brian Ross suggested such a link. If speech and action are related, is the Clinton Administration culpable because it denounced conservatives for making war on the environment? During the two government shutdowns, the president said that Gingrich and company wanted to starve our children, kill our grandmothers, withdraw treatment for the sick, and rape the environment. So why isn't Bill Clinton being blamed, in part, for the bombs mailed by the Unabomber during his administration? And why hasn't Mr. Kaczynski been labeled a left-wing radical environmental extremist? It is because "left" is considered good and "right" is considered wrong by the political and media elites. Does anyone doubt the president and his friends would have been heard from if, instead of allegedly mailing bombs to technocrats, Mr. Kaczynski had targeted abortion-clinic doctors? Carried to its illogical extreme, if Gordon Liddy, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh were responsible for Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Oklahoma City, why aren't Bill Clinton and his like-minded friends responsible for the Unabomber? The Justice Department should investigate! © 1996, Los Angeles Times Syndicate