Timothy McVeigh's True Motivations

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC is presenting "The McVeigh Tapes."  Today marks 15 years since Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.  McVeigh was an extremist, certainly, who seems to have been been influenced by a neo-Nazi novel, The Turner Diaries, in which the protagonists blow up a federal building and start a revolution against an oppressive government.

Today the Left wants desperately that you believe McVeigh and others like him are motivated by "right wing rhetoric," that Tea Parties are filled with potential McVeighs, preaching hatred and racism.  Rachel Maddow has stated,"Nine years after his execution, we are left worrying that Timothy McVeigh's voice from the grave echoes in a new rising tide of American anti-government extremism."

Maddow is a particularly ruthless propagandist for the far left. What "rising tide of anti-government extremism"? There is none.  Maddow and her ilk want to convince the public that Tea Party peaceful protestors of Obama's radical policies are the moral equivalent of Timothy McVeigh.  Earlier this week former President Bill Clinton tried to draw the same parallel, warning against the effects that rhetoric could have in producing another McVeigh.  But what rhetoric was he referring to?  He gave no examples, probably because he had none to give.

Timothy McVeigh was not motivated by right wing rhetoric but by left wing governmental actions against civilians. He was especially radicalized by the Clinton Administration's handling of the Waco Branch Davidian assault, in which tanks were used against civilians (over 70 people died), and the FBI assault on Ruby Ridge where innocent civilians again died from federal bullets.

McVeigh explained:

At Waco, once the FBI blocked the Davidians' abilities to communicate with the outside world, Bob Ricks [an FBI official at Waco] could then step forward and mold the facts to fit the FBI's purposes. The public never saw the Davidians' home video of their cute babies, adorable children, loving mothers, or protective fathers. Nor did they see pictures of the charred remains of children's bodies. Therefore, they didn't care when these families died a slow, torturous death at the hands of the FBI. They didn't care when boastful FBI agents posed for the cameras as people's lives were consumed in flames.

Waco was a Democrat disaster and many Americans were outraged at the operation.  That, of course, does not justify McVeigh's monstrous crime in the murder of  more innocent civilians.  However, the main point is clear:  McVeigh was inspired by the actions of a reckless liberal government, not by conservative rhetoric.

Image:  the Oklahoma City Bombing. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Update:  Yid With Lid has a related post today:  Dick Morris Says Bill Clinton Personally Directed the Waco Tragedy.