Science & Government Funding
Gore Vidal is an icon in the mainstream educated left (not the MSNBC version we see on TV), and he has done an admirable job in many publications of remaining even, thoughtful, and respectable as a reporter and thinker. One of his more interesting undertakings was his work with Timothy McVeigh, interviewing the terrorist and working to understand the motivations of his carrying out of the Oklahoma City Bombing. His findings, summarized in a Vanity Fair article written in 2001, are becoming a prescient warning of government power, moral means and ends, and how unsettled ideologues pose threats to all of us by merely mirroring the actions and intents of our own government. Two wrongs do not make a right, nor can the problem of violence be solved with more violence. But McVeigh doesn’t sound like a whack-job – at least not in any contrast to many government contractors within the military-industrial complex. His evil was great, but in comparison to actions of our own national government, they may not stand out as starkly as many believe. For all we know, he might have unleashed his destruction for our own government in some other country in a parallel universe, if they were only more careful…
Read the article here. Extremely sad that this man thought murder and mayhem were the answer to any of the problems we face. It likely only made the problems of violence in government much, much worse. Those who live by the sword will die by it. Peace is the solution here.
As a side, these types of discussions remind me how the nature of many disagreements is a reflection on morality, not politics. I do not like politics, nor do I engage in them. Morality, philosophy, and economics? That’s where we are…