When most Americans think of terrorism, certain images come to mind: airplanes flying into the World Trade Center. Muslim men with long beards in Afghanistan. Dark-skinned people trying to set off bombs on airplanes.
Yes, Professor, this is called "induction" and is experience-based. "Most Americans" can do it but I suspect you meant to demean the commonality of it.
But is Islamic-based terrorism a primary threat?
Are you unwilling to accept that it IS, at least, a primary threat? Would you believe secondary? How about 'inconvenient on a Friday evening'?
Maybe the face of terrorism is more diverse than that. Perhaps it is also a middle-aged white man. Perhaps it looks like Joe Stack. On February 18, Stack, an Austin, Texas man with tax problems, flew his personal airplane into the Internal Revenue Office Building in Austin.
Maybe, perhaps, the Professor is attempting to pass off a proposition on the strength of UNCERTAINTY instead of the the solid CERTAINTY of a sound argument. He makes much use of "maybe" and "perhaps" for someone who is supposed be able to write at an academic level. This sort of language in usually not accepted in academic writing simply because it suggests that the writer is not burdened with the defense of otherwise defenseless claims.
He killed one IRS employee and himself. His manifesto explained that the IRS forced him to violence after a tax code switch in the 1980s ruined his life. Stack's violent attack on a federal institution is only the latest example of right-wing terrorism to afflict the United States in recent years.
Some have questioned Stack's right-wing credentials.
Oh, here it comes. This is one of those cowardly souls who is bound to use the indefinite "some" precisely because it allows him to posit a statement without having either to defend or define it. Here he uses here it to erect a straw man against which he will bravely tilt. He need not explain exactly to whom he refers because there is bound to be someone out there who possesses a more curious mind upon whom we can depend to question "Stack's right-wing credentials" - just as we can depend upon the writer to be the other, incurious, fellow who does not question.
They point out a reference to communism in his manifesto. This is possible.
From what institution did the Professor obtain his credentials? I ask because I am struck by his deficiency as a writer and I wonder how even graduated. "Perhaps" he was able to submit and defend his thesis by way of miming. The quotation above carries as much argumentative weight as saying "The temperature high today was 72 degrees. This is possible".
Parsing the political leanings of an unhinged and suicidal man can be tricky and counterproductive.
Here he uses the anti-intellectual strength of argumentative uncertainty again. See how that works? He turns up the uncertainty whenever he encounters evidence he wants us to ignore. Looking into Stack's writings for any evidence which does not jibe with the Professor's claim is "tricky and counterproductive". I have to wonder about the writer's purpose if evidence is "counterproductive".
However, his anti-government leanings and attack on the Internal Revenue Service comes straight from the right-wing playbook.
Any who attain the station of "Professor" should recognize a circular argument on sight. ETHICAL academic writers even avoid using them. The writer should know what is in the playbook because he has taken upon himself to compose it.
Regardless, conservatives have taken up Stack's mantle.
He also has taken upon himself to determine who is conservative with a slippery and circular definition of "conservative".
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a likely candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination, told the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend that conservatives needed to “smash the windows out of big government.”
Much like a good crisis, far be it for the practiced leftist to let missing context go to waste.
Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King went a step further, expressing sympathy for Stack's actions. He told a CPAC crowd that they also needed to “implode” IRS offices.
Yeah, sounds like he wants to go all "Cloward-Piven" on their asses.
Stack's own daughter has portrayed him as hero. Samantha Bell told Good Morning America that her father's noble death should serve as a wake-up call to people to stand up against government agents she considers “pompous political thugs and their mindless minions.”
I am reasonably sure that when the leftists most felt themselves to be out of power and under the thumb of "the man" during the Sixties and Seventies they used very similar rhetoric. In the writer's emotional worldview, the value of language is determined by personal investment. I have no doubt that if a scratchy 8mm reel surfaced in which an unwashed hippy could be heard to accuse "the pigs" of being the 'mindless minions of pompous political thugs' he would sigh with romantic reflection. It just a matter of how he feels about the subject.
The man Stack killed, Vernon Hunter, served two tours of duty in the Vietnam War. Yet the hero is apparently his murderer.
And in a simplistic world in which there can be only one of a set to be said to possess a property, the SUPPOSED nomination of one of a pair denies that quality to the other. This also applies to simplistic minds operating in a more complex world.
Stack is the latest in a long string of violent right-wing attacks in recent years. On May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers, was shot and killed in his church by the anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder. On June 27, 2008, an unemployed truck driver named Jim Adkisson walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee and opened fire, killing two. He attacked the Unitarian church for its acceptance of gays and support of abortion rights, and claimed he wanted to kill every Democrat in the House and Senate.
I believe that we can certainly qualify most violent crime being committed today as "leftist". The prisons are chock-full of folks who would vote Democrat if felons could vote. The excuses given for the worst crimes are all essentially leftist in their explanation. The claim of pursuing "social justice" is common amongst them.
The right-wing Tea Party movement has employed violent rhetoric as well, including a speaker at a Washington state rally claiming she wanted to hang Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray.
And if Murray's effigy were to be hanged with the same frequency as G.W.Bush's, I would expect the same level of inquiry.
Some have called Stack the first Tea Party terrorist.
Some more "some" has been applied. I wonder if the writer has the fortitude to come out from behind the skirts of "some" and make that claim himself.
While Stack doesn't seem to have had explicit connections to organized right-wing activism, his actions come from the same conservative anger at the federal government and liberalism.
In summary: The writer has no reason to believe his own circular argument, but it is just SO satisfyingly circular!
The most famous example of right-wing terrorism occurred in April 1995, when Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two men with long-connections to right-wing militias, blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. 168 people died that day.
Observe the use of "long-connections" [sic]. Not "long-standing connections", but something suggestively similar. In fact, connecting Oklahoma City to militias is a stretch. Oh, I get it! A stretch IS a "long-connection". What a clever word smith! He used an accusation the veracity of which can be defended with reference to the opposite of its intended suggestion.
These rural-based militias preach anti-government extremism, often mixed with white supremacy, and constitute a real threat, as McVeigh and Nichols proved. Yet the United States has yet to have a serious public dialogue about increasingly frequent right-wing terrorism.
And, of course, rural-based militias are morally defective in comparison to their urban counterparts, the inner-city street gangs, the politics of which are decidedly left-leaning and who kill far more than died at OKC.
We have three major public spaces to remember victims of terrorism and to think about terrorism's impact upon national identity. The first is the former World Trade Center site in New York. The second is where Flight 93 crashed in rural Pennsylvania. And the third is the Oklahoma City Memorial.
Yeah, two out of three. I have long observed that nothing offends those who lack a sense of proportion quite as much as does proportion.
At the first two, visitors can visualize the bad guys, but the Oklahoma City Memorial does a remarkably poor job at contextualizing the attacks. The site is tremendously heartbreaking, but you get no sense that McVeigh and Nichols had right-wing connections.
This would, then, be in balance with all the exhibits which present the public with the leftist face of terror as displayed from the late Sixties into the early Eighties. I kid, of course. During that time nearly all domestic terror was practiced by political activists of the leftist persuasion. I can tell that the neglect of this subject pains the writer, but only if he thinks that right-wingers are getting off the hook.
They read like isolated crazy people who just wanted to kill innocent women and children. You see the McVeigh and Nichols as two evil men, not as representatives of a larger terrorist movement.
What?! Does he want S-T-E-R-E-O-T-Y-P-I-N-G?
Politics do enter the Oklahoma City Memorial.
Get ready, folks. This is his COMPLAINT.
The exhibits have several references to so-called “eco-terrorism.” The museum paints eco-terrorism as a serious threat to American national security. Examples of this horror include groups like the Earth Liberation Front setting fire to SUVs in car lots and the 2008 arson of a luxury home development in a Seattle suburb. While I'm not excusing such actions, they aren't terrorism.
We should thank him for moving the bar. We now know that the Tea Partiers can go at least as far and not be called terrorists. Except that they haven't and he is still calling them that.
They aren't attacks upon government institutions, they are not designed to inspire terror in the American population. They are stupid acts of outrage over the destruction of the environment.
No, he doesn't excuse them. He just accepts their premise in justifying their actions, that's all.
When environmentalists start killing CEO’s of chemical companies or blowing up Exxon-Mobil office buildings, then we can make legitimate comparisons between radical environmentalists and right-wing terrorists.
The Unabomber doesn't count? I must be good to be the one who gets to define all these terms.
Discussing this dubious threat at the Oklahoma City Memorial obscures McVeigh and Nichols’ political leanings.
Because in a simplistic world, we can only talk about ONE thing, ever. This also applies to simplistic minds operating in a more complex world.
Of course, conservatives don't want you to make these connections. They worked hard to ensure an apolitical Oklahoma City Memorial.
He detects conspiracy! Given the nature of the memorial, the Masons are the likeliest suspects. Watson, fetch my deerstalker!
Say what they will, but events like Oklahoma City, Knoxville, and Austin serve conservative purposes.
Yes readers, this writer is bent so far to the left he feels that an admittedly "apolitical" approach to a subject serves right-wing interests. According to this "historian", in order for an exhibit to be 'correct' it must represent the leftist viewpoint. 'Centrist' is wrong because it is still right-of-left.
The whole reason for this response is to highlight this very attitude amongst leftist so-called historians who treat on this subject of memorial exhibits. It is not just this guy. The revision of park memorials in pursuit of this agenda is a silent epidemic.
Talk-radio and the internet spew an endless expectoration of hate. Republicans might publicly distance themselves from this, but Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, et al have created a powerful conservative movement with the potential for violence. Jim Adkisson explicitly cited right-wing radio as having influenced his actions.
By what measure does the Professor assess this threat? The left has a body-pile which can only be matched by plague and famine. I think it is high time we started treating everyone who espouses Marxist or Rousseauvian theory as the dire threat to humanity that they actually are.
The threat of right-wing domestic terrorism provides at least as great a threat to the nation as Islamic terrorism. And it's far past time we started talking about this. How many Americans have to die before we take right-wing terrorism seriously?
To recap: Throughout the Twentieth Century, the two principal sources of practiced terror were leftists and Muslims. This trend has not abated with the new century. This Professor, therefore, according to his political inclinations, has decided that the proper function of memorial exhibits to the victims of terror is to deliberately misinform the public about the origin and threat of terrorism. That's just the sort of "historian" he is.
It is twats like this that sully my field of study and deflate the value of my education.
It’s very basic and simple — conservatives want prosperity while leftists hate it. You can’t have prosperity if your nation turns into Lebanon. Very simple.
The FACT that so many will pant,fawn and nod sagely in agreement with "...twats like this..." is a sad and dangerous testament to folks inability or just plain unwillingness to think.
I learnt plenty from your post and tips me hat to you in gratitude.
Executive summary of the autopsy: critical thinking is not the professor’s strong suit. Strongly agree!!!
Nicely done. His “arguments” are largely stillborn and unworthy of serious consideration, but there are enough out there who are making the spurious claims to make them “stick”.
The people behind the OKC bombing were from the Middle East, unquestionably. Terry Nichols learned how to make an ammonium-nitrate bomb from none other than Ramzi Yousef. Other ME terrormeisters were involved. McVeigh was unabashedly pro-Arab and was a rabid anti-Semite from the time he was a child. He and Nichols were recruited by Arabs with ties to Hezbollah and other terror groups to act as “cut-outs” and “lily-whites.” Husseini al-Husseini, ie, “John Doe #2,” the man who actually drove and spotted the explosive-filled Ryder truck to the Murrah Bldg, was probably an agent for Saddam’s Estikhabarat Unit 999—an outfit assigned to do internal and external terror ops and assassinations. The OKC bombing has no connection to the “right-wing.”