News-Record.com

Allen,

You wrote of Eric Rudolph: "He doesn't mind sacrificing others' lives in the pursuit of a twisted cause. Just not his own."

I believe I saw a cartoon you chose to print on the editorial pages that perfectly illustrated this point.

I agree very strongly with your comments about terrorism.

We had wake-up calls before September 11th; we largely seem to have ignored them.

I am glad that Eric Rudolph was caught and that he will serve the remainder of his life in jail.

Despite what he did, I still am much more in favor of him rotting in jail than having him executed.

I read the 11 pages of his writing that you posted, and all I could think about was that he is no different than any Islamic terrorist in how convinced he is that his religious views justify his willingness to kill.

In my mind, that either means that such individuals misinterpret and misrepresent their religion or it means that their religion is somehow lacking. My guess is that most people would prefer to assume the former rather than the latter.

By the rationale Rudolph shared, African-Americans would have been more than justified in conducting a holy war of deadly terror against white America.

There were some blacks who perhaps wanted to do that, but it is remarkable in many respects that King and others were able to persuade the level of restraint blacks showed.

I was equally pleased to learn that white supremacist Matthew Hale, the founder of World Church of the Creator, was sentenced to 40 years in jail. (This is less fresh news.)

Part of me feels that Hale may have been more influential and a greater overall threat than Rudolph.

I may have just missed it, but I do not remember reading much about Hale's sentencing in the News & Record.

(John Robinson has confirmed at least once that something that I thought I remembered was not accurate. Way too much to try to keep up with in this world and in our minds!)

When I think about terrorism in America, I am still drawn to the weekend of July Fourth in 1999.

I bet that weekend does not register with most Americans.

In terms of the number of people killed or even wounded, it comes nowhere close to September 11th, and for that reason does not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.

At the same time, it had one of the elements that September 11th did not have: it occurred on a famous day in American history, a day of celebration.

That was the weekend that Benjamin Nathaniel Smith went on a shooting spree, killing two and wounding others. The attacks were spread between two states, Illinois and Indiana, I believe, and blacks, Jews, and Asians were targeted. Ultimately, Smith killed himself before police could catch and arrest him.

Smith identified with Hale's ideas, and Hale walked a fine line between saying that he approved of Smith, while somewhat distancing himself from Smith's criminal acts.

I fully suspect that Hale at the very least endorsed what Smith did and maybe even provided some support and encouragement.

Part of me feels like our country would have responded strongly to an act of terrorism by white supremacists had they orchestrated an attack that ended up being as "sucessful" as the September 11th terrorist attacks by Muslims.

But how did we respond after the Oklahoma City bombing?

Wasn't that the worst case of terrorism on American soil prior to 9-11?

What steps did we take to prevent such attacks in the future? Were our efforts after Oklahoma City adequate?

Did our monitoring of militia groups and white supremacists after Oklahoma City increase as substantially as our monitoring of Muslims did after September 11th?

I am definitely not a fan of profiling with regard to security in this country. While we focus on members of a particular group, someone is going to suddenly slip by because he or she belongs to a group that has never aroused our fears and suspicions before. I want my own family members checked as carefully as any Muslims ever are, in the name of security in this country. (I do love and trust my family, in case anyone is thinking otherwise.)

I also guarantee you that there are some who do not regard past (and present) Klan activity as having been on the same level as al-Qaida's practive of terrorism.

At the very least modern-day America had a country willing to fight to protect its people.

Black Americans only had the knowledge that they could not depend on their country for protection.

In some cases, blacks had to worry about American law enforcement being among the strongest supporters of terrorism, if not actual terrorists themselves.

Martin Luther King, Jr. could have chosen to be a black American version of Bin Laden.

King does not deserve to be held up as perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I laugh every time a white person expresses anything less than at least an ounce of appreciation for the overall restraint King helped inspire blacks to choose as their respone to white American oppression.

If a person supports our military action in Iraq, would that person also support the argument that any foreign country would have been justified in attacking the United States as a means of liberating black Americans during slavery (if not also maybe during segregation)?

And even though other reasons besides slavery are always cited, does that also mean that the North was justified in confronting the South during the Civil War?

(In other words, even if the North wasn't really fighting this war to end slavery, was it OK for them to use that argument anyway to justify the war?)

And does what we call domestic violence deserve to be labeled as terrorism since anyone experiencing it has to feel terrorized and must wonder if law enforcement will acually be able to provide any real protection against it?

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