I visited my mother this morning. We sipped coffee in white wicker rockers on the breezy front porch, talking about things we can't discuss while my dad (still a JW believer) is around. I told her that I'd heard that the upcoming Dateline show about JWs should be explosive, and about the letter on the SilentLambs website from the Society--unconcerned with reporting murder before baptism, but very concerned about investigating marijuana use after baptism.
She told me about an editorial she had read this morning by Ellen Goodman about Timothy McVeigh. She liked it so much, she went inside to get the newspaper so I could read it.
You may read the full article here:
http://www.hoosiertimes.com/stories/thisday/digitalcity.010515_HT_A8_DMH05154.sto?PREVURI=%2Fstories%2Fthisday%2Fterseindex%2Fdigitalcity
Below are the parts that spoke to me and my experience as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, believing in a God who would kill to cleanse the earth of wickedness. Timothy McVeigh sees himself as an idealist: "I did it for the larger good."
Ginny
. . . The irony behind this enigma watch is that McVeigh has repeatedly said why. He's explained his act of violence in the language of anti-government militias, in sentiments copped from "The Turner Diaries," in political slogans rampant among those who identify the American enemy as the American government. He has said in repeated and certain terms: "I did it for the larger good.". . .
I am thinking of this duality because I have done it myself. I have searched for clues to terrorism in the psyche rather than in the statements. I have dug through a political or religious set of beliefs as if it were merely a cover story for a more telling psychological subtext.
But watching this story, I wonder how many other Americans have forgotten that acts of war or martyrdom or terrorism throughout history were — still are — often motivated by deep beliefs, not dysfunction. By conviction, not depression.
Crusades, car-bombings, suicide attacks, genocide. Religious strife and fascist wars and communist takeovers. Have we forgotten, in our own psychologically obsessed era, the power of ideas?
I say this not to justify McVeigh's action but quite the contrary. It's dangerous when we don't take people at their word. Their political word.
As Timothy McVeigh waits for execution, James Kopp sits in France waiting for extradition. The man who allegedly killed Dr. Barnett Slepian because he performed abortions is dismissed as a head case. But wasn't he a true believer? A good student of ideology?
. . .
But what is patriotism, after all, but the willingness to die for your country? Is one man's patriotism another man's psychosis?
Why did he do it? He thinks the bombing made him a hero. I think it made him a monster.
This man is not an enigma. He's a murderer.