Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 11:34:29 -0400 From: softserv@genie.geis.com Subject: Tenth Amendment War The following article is under submission. Permission to post this unaltered file in computer message bases and file bases granted for informational purposes only. Copyright (c) 1995 by J. Neil Schulman. All other rights reserved. THE TENTH AMENDMENT WAR by J. Neil Schulman If we're to believe Attorney General Janet Reno and the FBI, on April 19, 1995 -- the second anniversary of the FBI's incinerating 80 or so men, women, and children in Waco, Texas -- Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols, individuals who identified themselves with the patriot movement, bombed the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing possibly two hundred men, women, and children. We are to assume from what we know of these two individuals that their choice of April 19th indicates a motive of revenge against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, which had offices in that building, for its February 28, 1993 raid which began the 52-day federal siege against the Branch Davidians in Waco. April 19, 1995 was also the 220th anniversary of the "shot heard round the world" at Concord Bridge, Massachusetts, in which armed Americans routed British troops on a gun-confiscation detail. This lends to us the additional supposition that the bombing of the Murrah building was intended as an act of revolution. The deliberate mass murder of innocent people, especially children, cannot be deplored in strong enough language to convey the depravity of the crime. When President Clinton, even before we knew who the accused Oklahoma City bombers were, condemned them as murderous cowards, no sane American could disagree. American society prizes the individual in a way no previous civilization ever has. Consequently, terrorism -- the victimization of innocent individuals for political purposes -- is disgusting to the American heart more so than to any other people in human history. We are a country which prizes justice. Even as we mourn the children murdered in the Murrah building's day care center, it is necessary to ask: where was the national grief for the children killed in Waco, two years earlier -- and why have the federal officials whose deliberate choices led to their deaths never been placed on trial? The 1992 Los Angeles riots gave us the expression, "No justice, no peace." For the two years since the Waco fire, American patriots have been demanding an independent prosecution of the Justice Department, FBI, and ATF officials responsible for the invasion of a peaceful church group, their torture for 52 days, and their gassing and cremation. For two years, nothing has happened ... until now. For two years, the American mass media have considered Waco a non-story; or if they covered it at all, it was as parrots for the federal officials involved. The American television networks, major newspapers, and largest news magazines have placed all blame on the Branch Davidians for being "cultists," following a man "who said he was God," for practicing their belief that they had a right to keep military-style small arms, and for engaging in unconventional marital practices. Considering that these same charges were made by Roman officials against the original Christians, and by the Nineteenth-century United States government against the Mormons, it's no wonder that some Christian groups feel that the siege on Waco was an attack on the Davidians' religious practices as much as it was on their armory. Perhaps most ironic of all, on the same day that the American federal government was gassing, and ultimately creating a holocaust for, the Branch Davidians, President Clinton was commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Nazi SS siege on the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto. Violence is the bastard child of frustration. It was the German people's frustration at the sanctions imposed on them for losing the first world war that led to their embrace of the National Socialist movement and, consequently, a second world war. From the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution, aristocratic indifference to the lives of ordinary people has led to revolutions which measure bloodshed by the tankful. American history is no different. We have had wars with Native tribes as our settlers migrated west; a war fought by the federal government against states which sought to leave the union; factory Pinkertons against unionists; the Weather Underground against the United States government as it prosecuted the Vietnam War. Now, it appears, we have what military experts call "post-trinitarian" warfare: warfare no longer defined by nation-states aligned with their people and armies, but warfare among independent groups defined by beliefs and affinities. And the bombing of the Murrah federal building on the anniversaries of Concord Bridge and Waco seems to be an escalation of a war between those in this country who wish power centralized under the control of the federal government, and those who wish power dispersed as widely as possible in the hands of the people and the states. We will hear -- we are already hearing -- the American media and other partisans of centralized government control using the Murrah bombing as a blanket condemnation of the American patriot and militia movements. Americans who believe in self- rule, self-reliance, and self-defense must, in their view, be condemned as white supremacist, homophobic, sexist, religious cultists and gun nuts -- for the media pundits interpret the world through filters which can't see individuals pursuing their own lives but only class interests. This blindness is caused by a mental tar accumulated on their brains during their college years when the cultism rampant on campuses was invariably socialist. "No justice, no peace" -- whether or not it applied to the Los Angeles riots -- certainly applies here. There must be a trial for those who murdered innocent children in Oklahoma City; there must be a trial for those officials who murdered children two years earlier in Waco. The war over the Tenth Amendment -- the reservation of powers to the people and the states -- will only escalate so long as the centralists define who is a victim to be mourned and who is trash to be burned. Those in the media and government who engage in hate speech against those Americans who believe in the traditional values of self-rule, self-reliance, and self-defense must finally realize that they are sowing the seeds of a culture war. And, like all wars, the worst hurt will be the children. ## J. NEIL SCHULMAN is the author of two Prometheus award- winning novels, Alongside Night and The Rainbow Cadenza, short fiction, nonfiction, and screenwritings, including the CBS Twilight Zone episode "Profile in Silver." His latest book is STOPPING POWER: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns. Schulman has been published in the Los Angeles Times and other national newspapers, as well as National Review, Reason, Liberty, and other magazines. His LA Times article "If Gun Laws Work, Why Are We Afraid?" won the James Madison Award from the Second Amendment Foundation. Schulman's books have been praised by Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, Anthony Burgess, Robert A. Heinlein, Colin Wilson, and many other prominent individuals. Charlton Heston said of STOPPING POWER: "Mr. Schulman's book is the most cogent explanation of the gun issue I have yet read. He presents the assault on the Second Amendment in frighteningly clear terms. Even the extremists who would ban firearms will learn from his lucid prose." Reply to: J. Neil Schulman Mail: P.O. Box 94, Long Beach, CA 90801-0094 Voice Mail & Fax: (500) 44-JNEIL JNS BBS: 1-500-44-JNEIL,,,,25 Internet: softserv@genie.geis.com Post as filename: TENTHWAR.TXT