Identity" adherents—all calling them- selves patriots. Fundamentalist preachers and gun dealers rank among their leaders. True Believers and In the past, these would-be Storm Troopers seemed more goofy than deadly. Utter Madness Now, they've spawned what Harvard psy- chiatrist Robert Coles calls "the craziness of hate." James A. Haught Apparently, the Oklahoma horror was committed by True Believers at the far ost of us live with uncertain beliefs; menace of the 1990s. A dozen car bomb- edge of the "militia" movement, a para- Mwe are never totally sure what's ings have killed about 300 unsuspecting military fringe of the right-to-bear-arms right or wrong, true or false. We can't victims around the world in the past two forces in America. Reportedly, the fathom people who feel so absolutely years. Some of the assaults were suicide bombers come from a clique of home- "right" that they'll blow up a government missions by volunteer martyrs. The poi- grown militants who think the U.S. gov- building with a day-care center full of son gas attack in Tokyo's subway added a ernment is conspiring with the United children. new dimension to the danger. Nations to disarm them and impose a Or kill doctors and receptionists at It's perplexing that some of the fanatics "New World Order." They think the tragic abortion clinics. are intelligent and possess high technical 1993 siege in Waco was part of a sinister Or plant nerve gas in a subway full of skills. Many adherents to Japan's federal plan to take away private citizens' defenseless commuters. Supreme Truth cult, suspected in the sub- guns—a plan that had to be resisted and Or offer a $1 million reward for the way gassing, are college graduates. Yet Waco avenged. assassination of a "blaspheming" author. they kissed their guru's big toe and paid Like all cults, this gaggle spreads Or hole up with automatic weapons in $2,000 each for a sip of his bathwater and bizarre talk. One spokesman, janitor Mark a Waco doomsday cult, ready to fight the $10,000 for a drink of his blood. What's Koernke of Michigan, says Los Angeles outside world. going on here? street gangs are being recruited into a Or shoot high-school girls in the face What's the pathology behind killing secret police force to disarm Americans. in Algeria because they aren't wearing innocent strangers to make a statement? He ends his shortwave radio broadcasts: veils. In his classic book, The True Believer, "God bless the Republic. Death to the Or machine-gun Hindu weddings in Eric Hoffer said such zealots undergo a New World Order. We shall prevail." Punjab to gain a Sikh theocracy, the Land psychological process of renouncing their The first suspect charged in the of the Pure. individuality and finding identity in a vio- Oklahoma tragedy, Timothy McVeigh, is Or bomb the World Trade Center as a lent cause. Hoffer wrote: an ex-soldier who adores guns and hates symbolic strike against "the Great Satan." The fanatic is perpetually incomplete government. Acquaintances say he thinks The April 19, 1995, horror in Okla- and insecure. He cannot generate self- the Army planted a computer chip in his homa City was the latest and largest assurance out of his individual rump after Operation Desert Storm. They reminder that True Believers are a very resources—out of his rejected self—but say he always carried a pistol, fired wild finds it only by clinging passionately to real peril, even if normal people can't whatever support he happens to salvos from automatic weapons, and made understand them. The bombers think that embrace. This passionate attachment is a pilgrimage to the scene of the Waco their cause is more important than the the essence of his blind devotion and siege. The horrendous fuel-and-fertilizer lives of pre-school tots and office work- religiosity, and he sees in it the source of bomb in Oklahoma City was detonated on ers. To them, mass murder is justified to all virtue and strength.... He easily the second anniversary of the Waco sees himself as the supporter and deliver their vengeful message. To the rest defender of the holy cause to which he tragedy, a symbolic date for retribution of us, it's madness that anyone would clings. And he is ready to sacrifice his against the government. make elaborate secret plans to massacre life.... McVeigh's colleagues, brothers James children as a public demonstration. and Terry Nichols, renounced U.S. citi- Now that the Cold War is over, this This explanation may be helpful to zenship, returned their Social Security kind of danger has taken the spotlight as a psychiatrists, but it can't placate the shat- cards, and spurned driver's licenses and tered families of Oklahoma City. vehicle plates. Religion is entwined in much murder McVeigh was caught because he didn't James A. Haught, editor of the Charleston by fanatics, but the Oklahoma tragedy have a license tag on his car—perhaps (West Virginia) Gazette, is author of Holy seems to involve cultism tied more to guns another act of rejection of government. He Hatred: Religious Conflicts of the '90s than to scriptures. America has a variety had a large-caliber German pistol in his and Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of oddball, far-right, armed, covert belt and plenty of cash in his pockets. If of Religious Murder and Madness (both groups—neo-Nazis, tax-haters, "skin- he was an unemployed security guard, by Prometheus Books). heads," white-supremacists, the Church of where did the money come from? the Aryan Nations, survivalists, "Christian Political scientist John George, an

Summer 1995 13 author of Nazis, Communists, Klansmen who blasted the World Trade Center. He Oklahoma tragedy might be repeated and Others on the Fringe: Political says hundreds of them are in America, in many times in many U.S. cities. America Extremism in America (Prometheus secret cells and networks. He wrote: is a wide-open democracy, where all peo- Books), says of the militia movement: ple are free to travel. Explosives, poisons, "This kind of group is going to attract the The Islamist terrorists KNOW that their and ingredients for fuel-and-fertilizer right-wing Christian nationalist, like the objective will ultimately be realized bombs are accessible. through Allah's Will. The belief in this Arayan Nation or Aryan Resistance types, inevitability can be compared to the The only final ingredient required is the intense white racial nationalists." belief in miracles. It is a profound com- the fanatic heart, which sees a massacre of Meanwhile, right-to-bear-arms nuts mitment of the individual that is not children as an act of bravery. Federal aren't the only True Believers ready to kill affected by one's own temporary set- agents will do their utmost to detect such and die in the United States. In "Target backs or the logic of others. secret murderers in our midst, but the task America: Terrorism in the U.S. Today," will be nearly impossible. Yossef Bodandsky, director of the House The logic of others certainly didn't Americans can't comprehend True Task Force on Terrorism and Uncon- deter the Oklahoma City plotters. They Believers, and it's increasingly clear that ventional Warfare, focuses on foreign- followed their own demented logic. we can't escape the nightmares they trained Muslim extremists, such as those It's horrifying to realize that the cause. •

Oregon law been passed than opponents went to court to obtain a preliminary Right to Die: injunction to prevent the law from going into effect. As of now, the Oregon Death The Battle Is Joined with Dignity Act is in legal limbo, and it probably will not go into effect, if at all, for at least another year, pending a final Ronald A. Lindsay court ruling at the appellate level. Proponents of legal reform have also turned to the courts, but so far with only he last few months have witnessed suicide law for terminally ill patients, mixed results. In 1994, Compassion in Tseveral significant developments in which was approved through a voter ref- Dying, a group in Washington State favor- the continuing struggle to secure the right erendum in November 1994, appears to ing legal reform, brought suit in federal of competent persons to control the cir- have given some impetus to the first alter- district court seeking a ruling that laws cumstances of their own death. The even- native. Many proponents of the right to against assisted suicide deprive terminally tual outcome of this struggle remains die believe that this method of legal ill patients of a liberty interest protected uncertain, but what is clear is that there reform is actually preferable to any court- by the Fourteenth Amendment to the will be a definitive outcome by the end of imposed solution. First, obtaining United States Constitution. (That amend- the decade. Furthermore, that outcome approval of reform by a majority of legis- ment, adopted after the Civil War, pro- will be one of the following three alterna- lators or voters ensures that there is broad vides that no state shall "deprive any per- tives: (1) A few states will, through legis- enough popular support to make the nec- son of life, liberty, or property, without lation or voter initiative, liberalize their essary changes in legal and medical prac- due process of law.") The district court laws to allow for assisted suicide or vol- tice with minimum disruption. Moreover, accepted the plaintiffs' argument and untary euthanasia; (2) The courts will having a few states adopt right-to-die laws declared laws prohibiting assisted suicide decide that there is a constitutional right on a piecemeal basis should help to lay to of terminally ill patients to be unconstitu- to assisted suicide, leading to at least a rest one of the traditional arguments tional. The district court reasoned that a limited right to die on a national level; or against legal reform. The most common decision to end one's life is a choice "cen- (3) The proponents of state control will non-religious argument against assisted tral to personal dignity and autonomy" triumph, effectively blocking any mean- suicide or voluntary euthanasia is that and, therefore, a person possesses a fun- ingful reform for the foreseeable future. making such practices legal will damental liberty interest in determining, Oregon's recent adoption of an assisted inevitably lead to involuntary euthanasia. to the extent possible, the time and man- Seeing how assisted suicide measures ner of his or her own death. Ronald A. Lindsay is an attorney in pri- operate in a few states over a period of This victory was short-lived, however. vate practice in Washington, D.C. He is several years should provide confirming In March of this year, the U.S. Court of also a doctoral candidate in philosophy evidence that medical and legal practition- Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overruled at Georgetown University, where he is ers can and will distinguish between vol- the district court decision by a vote of 2-1. completing a dissertation on assisted sui- untary requests for assistance in dying and The majority opinion, written by Reagan- cide and euthanasia. killing persons against their will. appointee John Noonan, criticized the dis- Unfortunately, no sooner had the trict court for ignoring the state's interests

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