Killing Innocents Is No Way To Protest

We saw Wednesday where unchecked hatred for government leads.

A car bomb killed dozens, probably hundreds, of men, women and children in a federal building in, of all places, Oklahoma City. Not the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Or an Israeli Embassy anywhere. Or even the World Trade Center in New York City.

Oklahoma City. In the heartland of America.

The bomb killed people, like you and me, who struggle to make mortgage payments, send their kids to college and lead peaceful lives in an increasingly unpeaceful society - not faceless bureaucrats who work for Big Brother.

And it killed children.

No one knows which terrorist group or madmen are responsible for this indescribably wicked, cowardly act. International terrorists on some unholy crusade could have done it. Or a domestic group perverting the anniversary of the Branch Davidian massacre at Waco, Texas. Or some kook who has a beef with government.

But we do know that the seeds for this kind of violence are sprouting everywhere in this country. You hear it in the antigovernment rhetoric of talk radio. You read it on the Internet computer network. You see it in national polls that rank all levels of government low. You also see it in hate groups. And among the rapidly growing anti-government movements.

Violent rhetoric dehumanizes targets and leads to this kind of bloodshed.

Hitler inflamed Nazi Germany with his ranting against Jewish people. Millions were exterminated. Surviving Germans didn’t realize that the Jew was their neighbor until after the war when they were forced by the Allies to walk past emaciated bodies found in concentration camps.

The federal employees and their children who died in the Oklahoma City carnage were our neighbors. In a democratic society, the government is us.

Dissent is as American as the Boston Tea Party. But the wholesale slaughter of innocent people isn’t. That’s the work of cowards who hold no value for life other than their own.

President Clinton has vowed to turn over every stone in bringing the perpetrators of Wednesday’s bombing to justice. They deserve swift justice and execution.

The rest of us?

We need to step back from the anger that is leading this country into the abyss. We must learn to vent our emotions in peaceful ways. We must work within the system to change the system.

Otherwise, the terrorist attacks that have victimized other peoples will become our portion.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board