Okay, what have we learned?
For reasons still being kept secret, a federal agency already known -- well enough to be examined and rebuked by several legislative committees over the years -- for a longstanding, violent disregard of the law, invades the home of a man whose religious beliefs and personal habits they abominate, violating his rights under the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
The man and his followers fight back, killing four of the outlaw agency's minions, wounding many more, and suffering their own losses in the process. The agency responds by cutting off his electricity, water, and especially his contact with the outside world. They are then free to say anything at all about him -- in pronouncements that contradict one another daily as the agency finds itself locked in a bitter power struggle with another outfit eager to gain credit for "straightening out the mess" -- and, more importantly, to script his side of the subsequent "negotiations" any way they please.
The impasse lasts almost two months, ironically, at the same time four L.A. cops are being given a second trial for brutalizing a single individual, sparking one of the ugliest riots in history. Armored vehicles surround the house, already ringed with snipers using scoped, high-powered rifles. Loudspeakers playing obnoxious records at the highest possible volume, and searchlights, deprive those in the house of sleep (in the aftermath, nobody in authority will mention the effect this technique, originated by North Korean Communists as a battle tactic, may have had on their judgment).
Finally -- another irony -- on the 50th anniversary of the rising of the Warsaw Ghetto, some of the armor punches holes in the house and gas of some kind is injected. The house bursts into flame and is reduced to ashes in less than an hour. At least 80 lives, including those of more than a dozen children, are snuffed out.
Spokesmen for the outlaw agencies, the Attorney General, and the President all hold press conferences to articulate a common theme: blame the victim.
He had illegal weapons -- as soon as they can be prepared in a secret government workshop and planted among the cinders being "examined" by the agency that created them. He was abusing children -- the tapes will be stored with the data on the JFK assassination. He set the fire -- our snipers saw him doing it. Film at 11 -- in 3000 A.D. He shot his followers who tried to escape -- or was that Jim Jones? Best of all, he's dead -- he can't say a damn thing to embarrass us, any more than when his contact with the world was severed at the start of the whole travesty.
A leading national paper claims 93% of the American people believe that a man who resisted a savage attack on his home is somehow responsible for everything that resulted. But when did you ever know 93% of Americans to agree on anything -- doesn't this sound more like the outcome of a Soviet election than an opinion poll?
Very well, what can we infer from the above? For starters, never forget that, although Democratic careers are on the line (and rightfully so) over this fiasco, by the outlaw agency's admission, it was planned and rehearsed by a Republican administration. Which may explain why Paul Harvey, who evidently used up all his courage and integrity changing his mind (at about the same time I did) about the war in Viet Nam -- has been acting as little more than a mouthpiece for a state that has no regard for the Bill of Rights.
More importantly, when Rush Limbaugh, who's been a quivering tower of Jello during the whole thing, takes essentially the same stance as Bill Clinton, it's time for fundamental changes, if not in the system, then at least within yourself.
On March 5, back at the beginning, Mary Gingell, national chair of the Libertarian Party, issued a press release condemning the outlaw agency and calling for its abolition. In fact, the LP has promised in its platform since 1977, for at least 16 years, to abolish both agencies involved in Waco. I'm proud to say I was there and helped to write that plank.
True, the LP is tiny and insignificant (although less so than in 1977 -- ask the Democrats in Georgia if you doubt it). But, alone in a howling wilderness of fascists scrambling now to cover their behinds with phony polls and Big Lies, the LP is right about what happened in Waco. And if their advice had been followed in 1977, Waco never would have happened.
Think about it. And think about the fact that, if you've had enough of political parties more interested in collecting and holding power -- at whatever cost to the Bill of Rights, let alone human life -- than in defending and expanding individual liberty, maybe the change it's time for within yourself is to make the LP less tiny and insignificant by a single voice and a single vote.
Think about it.
L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of 19 books including The Probability Broach, The Crystal Empire, Henry Martyn, The Lando Calrissian Adventures, Pallas, and (forthcoming) Bretta Martyn and Lever Action. An NRA Life Member and founder of the Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus, he has been active in the Libertarian movement for 34 years and is its most prolific and widely-published living novelist.Permission to redistribute this article is herewith granted by the author -- provided that it is reproduced unedited, in its entirety, and appropriate credit given.
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