There are dates in our calendar that are more suited for moral reflection than others. April 19th is one of those days, especially for us Americans. That day is a somber one in modern American history:
- In 1993, it marked the end of the Waco Siege, where a religious community had been surrounded by federal law enforcement for 51 days;
- On the same day in 1995, terrorist Timothy McVeigh planted a bomb outside the federal building in Oklahoma City; the bomb destroyed a large portion of the building and killed 168 people.
McVeigh was a terrorist and deserved the death sentence he got. There is no angle to his actions that can ever be morally justified. Instead, the date of April 19th is a reminder of a phenomenon in America that is not being discussed often enough these days. This phenomenon is centered in part around the events in Waco but stretches beyond them to Idaho, Montana, and even Ohio.
Before we file away McVeigh into the Hell where he now justifiably dwells, we should note that when explaining his attack on the Alfred Murrah building in Oklahoma City, he did refer to the Waco Siege, in which he blamed the federal government for the deaths of 82 Branch Davidians community members.
He is also said to have been critical of how the federal government handled another event involving a siege of a group of citizens. Six months before the Waco Siege, federal authorities executed an 11-day-long siege of the family of Randy and Vicki Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. That siege also resulted in the loss of lives: a U.S. Marshal and the son and the wife of the Weaver family.
Randy and Vicki Weaver had moved to the remote property in northern Idaho because they sought a quiet life in isolation from society. They wanted to raise their children, practice their faith, and, as best they could, not interact too much with the outside world.
The Branch Davidians in Waco can be said to have harbored the same desire. When the federal government eventually stormed their compound, it ended with the deaths of 82 members of the community, including 28 children.
Although some 30 years have passed since these incidents, the question lingers: did government use excessive force? To put the question in a more provocative format: did these events set a standard for the federal government to use excessive force when responding to people who dissent from government in one form or another?
Many conservatives quickly answer ‘yes’ to this question and move on. Likewise, people on the left will defend the government’s actions and point to the formal reasons for which these two events happened. In both cases, namely, the federal government had legal reasons for contacting the citizens in question. Randy Weaver had failed to appear in court and had a warrant issued for his arrest. It was in the execution of that arrest warrant that the U.S. Marshals encountered Weaver, his son, and a friend of the family, whereupon a gunfight broke out.
The Branch Davidians had allegedly stockpiled firearms illegally, which led to an affidavit filed by a federal law enforcement agent and, soon after, the attempt by the ATF to storm the compound. Upon meeting heavy resistance, the ATF withdrew, counting four dead among their ranks, and the FBI organized the siege.
There are many pressing moral issues related to these incidents, and to others of a similar kind, like the one where federal agents engaged in an 81-day-long standoff with the so-called Freemen in Jordan, Montana. One of these issues, which I discussed two years ago, has to do with how far we as individuals can go in isolating ourselves from society, and to what extent—if any—government has the right to force people back into the greater community.
However, the questions about government using excessive force against its dissenters are more pressing from a moral viewpoint. These questions are even more important if we stretch our timeline back to 1970 and the Kent State shootings. On May 4th, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on people who protested the Vietnam War at Kent State University. Four protesters were killed, and nine others injured.
In this case, as in Ruby Ridge and in Waco, casualties resulted from a confrontation between people who believed in a cause, and a government that they saw themselves as dissidents from. There are particular circumstances in all of these cases that limit comparisons of them, but they all have one important thing in common: the people targeted by government expressed their dissent from that very same government. The forms of expression were different—in the Kent State case protesters were running wild on a college campus while in Ruby Ridge and Waco, the dissenters purposely withdrew from society—but the reaction from government was essentially the same.
The left will protest here and claim that the Kent State shootings cannot be compared to the other events. The students were unarmed, while the family in Idaho, and especially the Branch Davidians, had multiple firearms in their possession. However—and again recognizing the particular circumstances in each case—just because dissenters are armed, does not mean that a lethal government response is appropriate.
As a good example of how government reacted differently, the 1996 incident involving the Montana Freemen claimed no casualties. It ended peacefully. However, given that this incident happened a year after the Waco Siege, it is appropriate to ask what the federal government would have done, had they not been under the enhanced scrutiny that Ruby Ridge and Waco led to. It was clear in 1996 that the federal government wanted to avoid earning more of a reputation for violent clampdowns on people who harbored political views critical of that same federal government. Adding to this was a sense of religious persecution: the Weaver family and, obviously, the Branch Davidians, based their lives on religious convictions. There was also a religious element to the Montana Freemen community.
At the same time, the Freemen incident had some heavy-handed elements to it. There was considerable government force involved, even though it was not lethal in nature. The members of the group lived on a ranch they had named Justus Township. As part of a financial fraud investigation against the Freemen, the federal government had opened foreclosure proceedings against the ranch. Since the group refused to leave, and since they were known to be armed, federal authorities surrounded them and decided to wait them out.
Thanks to the non-violent solution to the stand-off in Montana, it never became part of the public discourse on the relations between the U.S. government and groups of dissidents. All the others, from Kent State to Waco, sparked significant debate and, in the Kent State case, a Congressional hearing. Despite that, the debate over the proportionality in government actions has never quite answered the question of how much force is enough.
More importantly, while Congress held a hearing on the Kent State shootings and in effect clarified that the use of lethal force against Vietnam War protesters was abhorrent, no similar action has been taken with regard to people who are perceived as ‘far right.’
It goes without saying that when government deals with armed aggressors who commit crimes against other civilians or law enforcement, there should be no limit to what kind of response is appropriate. A violent aggressor must be stopped, period. But none of the cases discussed here involved a violent aggressor. The students at Kent State, although disturbing the peace, were unarmed; prior to the appearance of U.S. Marshals on his property, Randy Weaver never threatened anyone with a firearm; the Branch Davidians did not terrorize the outside community; the Freemen were undoubtedly criminals, but their favorite illegal pastime consisted of passing fraudulent checks and money orders.
To this point, back in 2022, I wrote of the Ruby Ridge incident that it
clarifies the line between two different kinds of people holding views we may all disagree with. On the one hand, we have the violent aggressor who kills others out of hatred. On the other hand, we have Randy Weaver, a person who may share all the basic beliefs with the aggressor but has no interest in acting on them. He simply wants to live in isolation.
When fellow citizens wish to be left alone, and they have not committed any crimes that have a direct negative impact on the community beyond their borders, it cannot be morally justified for government to use overwhelming force against them. Once that violence is permitted or tolerated in cases like Ruby Ridge and Waco, the excessive-force method against dissenters can easily escalate and spread to other forms of government clampdowns.
As a case in point, let us leap across the Atlantic Ocean where we find a good example of what may come in America. This week, there was an incident in Belgium where Emir Kir, Mayor of Saint Josse, ordered police to shut down a large gathering of conservatives.
As Mayor Kir explained in a tweet, he had a seemingly proper formal reason for the shutdown: the city could not guarantee the safety and security of the participants. In the same tweet, he also stated that “the extreme right” was not welcome in his city, but the fact that he could produce a formal reason raises the same question that only reinforces the point about the aforementioned American incidents. If government wants to, it can produce any formally legitimate reason to clamp down on its political opponents:
- At Kent State, the National Guardsmen confronted people who were disrupting public order;
- At Ruby Ridge, Randy Weaver was formally accused of not appearing in court;
- The Branch Davidians allegedly had illegal firearms in their possession.
Was it unavoidable or desirable for government to escalate its response to the point of lethal force?
To put yet another angle to this question, let us consider the forceful prosecution of people who participated in the events of January 6th, 2021. A large group of people, who entered the U.S. Capitol after attending a Trump rally, were subsequently accused and convicted of a variety of crimes. There are stories of how those convicted in relation to the J6 events are being held in prison under extreme conditions.
It is easy to find people and communities online who firmly believe that conservatives are being targeted with excessive force by the federal government. Even though they rarely mention the events from the 1990s, they see a pattern of hostility from their own government. Whether merited or not is, again, a matter to be finally judged on a case-by-case basis, but once again: we must not dismiss the dangers of escalating the use of government force. If isolationists can be targeted with force, others who have not yet isolated themselves can be silenced.
We have good reasons to worry about these trends. To this point, consider the federal government’s lack of response to organized and aggressive dissent from the left during the riots in the summer of 2020. The riots, which were clearly organized at a national level, were allowed to rage on for months without any more than local police response. The disproportionately weak law-enforcement response to those riots, compared to all the other cases discussed here, only reinforces the impression that the use of force against people and groups deemed conservative is not only here, but on the rise.
Dissent and Government Force
There are dates in our calendar that are more suited for moral reflection than others. April 19th is one of those days, especially for us Americans. That day is a somber one in modern American history:
McVeigh was a terrorist and deserved the death sentence he got. There is no angle to his actions that can ever be morally justified. Instead, the date of April 19th is a reminder of a phenomenon in America that is not being discussed often enough these days. This phenomenon is centered in part around the events in Waco but stretches beyond them to Idaho, Montana, and even Ohio.
Before we file away McVeigh into the Hell where he now justifiably dwells, we should note that when explaining his attack on the Alfred Murrah building in Oklahoma City, he did refer to the Waco Siege, in which he blamed the federal government for the deaths of 82 Branch Davidians community members.
He is also said to have been critical of how the federal government handled another event involving a siege of a group of citizens. Six months before the Waco Siege, federal authorities executed an 11-day-long siege of the family of Randy and Vicki Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. That siege also resulted in the loss of lives: a U.S. Marshal and the son and the wife of the Weaver family.
Randy and Vicki Weaver had moved to the remote property in northern Idaho because they sought a quiet life in isolation from society. They wanted to raise their children, practice their faith, and, as best they could, not interact too much with the outside world.
The Branch Davidians in Waco can be said to have harbored the same desire. When the federal government eventually stormed their compound, it ended with the deaths of 82 members of the community, including 28 children.
Although some 30 years have passed since these incidents, the question lingers: did government use excessive force? To put the question in a more provocative format: did these events set a standard for the federal government to use excessive force when responding to people who dissent from government in one form or another?
Many conservatives quickly answer ‘yes’ to this question and move on. Likewise, people on the left will defend the government’s actions and point to the formal reasons for which these two events happened. In both cases, namely, the federal government had legal reasons for contacting the citizens in question. Randy Weaver had failed to appear in court and had a warrant issued for his arrest. It was in the execution of that arrest warrant that the U.S. Marshals encountered Weaver, his son, and a friend of the family, whereupon a gunfight broke out.
The Branch Davidians had allegedly stockpiled firearms illegally, which led to an affidavit filed by a federal law enforcement agent and, soon after, the attempt by the ATF to storm the compound. Upon meeting heavy resistance, the ATF withdrew, counting four dead among their ranks, and the FBI organized the siege.
There are many pressing moral issues related to these incidents, and to others of a similar kind, like the one where federal agents engaged in an 81-day-long standoff with the so-called Freemen in Jordan, Montana. One of these issues, which I discussed two years ago, has to do with how far we as individuals can go in isolating ourselves from society, and to what extent—if any—government has the right to force people back into the greater community.
However, the questions about government using excessive force against its dissenters are more pressing from a moral viewpoint. These questions are even more important if we stretch our timeline back to 1970 and the Kent State shootings. On May 4th, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on people who protested the Vietnam War at Kent State University. Four protesters were killed, and nine others injured.
In this case, as in Ruby Ridge and in Waco, casualties resulted from a confrontation between people who believed in a cause, and a government that they saw themselves as dissidents from. There are particular circumstances in all of these cases that limit comparisons of them, but they all have one important thing in common: the people targeted by government expressed their dissent from that very same government. The forms of expression were different—in the Kent State case protesters were running wild on a college campus while in Ruby Ridge and Waco, the dissenters purposely withdrew from society—but the reaction from government was essentially the same.
The left will protest here and claim that the Kent State shootings cannot be compared to the other events. The students were unarmed, while the family in Idaho, and especially the Branch Davidians, had multiple firearms in their possession. However—and again recognizing the particular circumstances in each case—just because dissenters are armed, does not mean that a lethal government response is appropriate.
As a good example of how government reacted differently, the 1996 incident involving the Montana Freemen claimed no casualties. It ended peacefully. However, given that this incident happened a year after the Waco Siege, it is appropriate to ask what the federal government would have done, had they not been under the enhanced scrutiny that Ruby Ridge and Waco led to. It was clear in 1996 that the federal government wanted to avoid earning more of a reputation for violent clampdowns on people who harbored political views critical of that same federal government. Adding to this was a sense of religious persecution: the Weaver family and, obviously, the Branch Davidians, based their lives on religious convictions. There was also a religious element to the Montana Freemen community.
At the same time, the Freemen incident had some heavy-handed elements to it. There was considerable government force involved, even though it was not lethal in nature. The members of the group lived on a ranch they had named Justus Township. As part of a financial fraud investigation against the Freemen, the federal government had opened foreclosure proceedings against the ranch. Since the group refused to leave, and since they were known to be armed, federal authorities surrounded them and decided to wait them out.
Thanks to the non-violent solution to the stand-off in Montana, it never became part of the public discourse on the relations between the U.S. government and groups of dissidents. All the others, from Kent State to Waco, sparked significant debate and, in the Kent State case, a Congressional hearing. Despite that, the debate over the proportionality in government actions has never quite answered the question of how much force is enough.
More importantly, while Congress held a hearing on the Kent State shootings and in effect clarified that the use of lethal force against Vietnam War protesters was abhorrent, no similar action has been taken with regard to people who are perceived as ‘far right.’
It goes without saying that when government deals with armed aggressors who commit crimes against other civilians or law enforcement, there should be no limit to what kind of response is appropriate. A violent aggressor must be stopped, period. But none of the cases discussed here involved a violent aggressor. The students at Kent State, although disturbing the peace, were unarmed; prior to the appearance of U.S. Marshals on his property, Randy Weaver never threatened anyone with a firearm; the Branch Davidians did not terrorize the outside community; the Freemen were undoubtedly criminals, but their favorite illegal pastime consisted of passing fraudulent checks and money orders.
To this point, back in 2022, I wrote of the Ruby Ridge incident that it
When fellow citizens wish to be left alone, and they have not committed any crimes that have a direct negative impact on the community beyond their borders, it cannot be morally justified for government to use overwhelming force against them. Once that violence is permitted or tolerated in cases like Ruby Ridge and Waco, the excessive-force method against dissenters can easily escalate and spread to other forms of government clampdowns.
As a case in point, let us leap across the Atlantic Ocean where we find a good example of what may come in America. This week, there was an incident in Belgium where Emir Kir, Mayor of Saint Josse, ordered police to shut down a large gathering of conservatives.
As Mayor Kir explained in a tweet, he had a seemingly proper formal reason for the shutdown: the city could not guarantee the safety and security of the participants. In the same tweet, he also stated that “the extreme right” was not welcome in his city, but the fact that he could produce a formal reason raises the same question that only reinforces the point about the aforementioned American incidents. If government wants to, it can produce any formally legitimate reason to clamp down on its political opponents:
Was it unavoidable or desirable for government to escalate its response to the point of lethal force?
To put yet another angle to this question, let us consider the forceful prosecution of people who participated in the events of January 6th, 2021. A large group of people, who entered the U.S. Capitol after attending a Trump rally, were subsequently accused and convicted of a variety of crimes. There are stories of how those convicted in relation to the J6 events are being held in prison under extreme conditions.
It is easy to find people and communities online who firmly believe that conservatives are being targeted with excessive force by the federal government. Even though they rarely mention the events from the 1990s, they see a pattern of hostility from their own government. Whether merited or not is, again, a matter to be finally judged on a case-by-case basis, but once again: we must not dismiss the dangers of escalating the use of government force. If isolationists can be targeted with force, others who have not yet isolated themselves can be silenced.
We have good reasons to worry about these trends. To this point, consider the federal government’s lack of response to organized and aggressive dissent from the left during the riots in the summer of 2020. The riots, which were clearly organized at a national level, were allowed to rage on for months without any more than local police response. The disproportionately weak law-enforcement response to those riots, compared to all the other cases discussed here, only reinforces the impression that the use of force against people and groups deemed conservative is not only here, but on the rise.
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