From: IN%"tallpaul@pipeline.com" 1-MAY-1996 13:19:10.69

I stand behind my original post and the analysis in it.

I am amused at the tremendous attempts by people with certain political affinities to bail out Weaver by a series of arguments based either on

Actually, the political affinities seem rather to be on the other foot. Every organization I know of that calls Weaver a racist, as opposed to a separatist, also tries to deny exactly how wrongful the government's actions were at Ruby Ridge. The biggest example of this is the US government, but organizations such as the American Jewish Committee are also guilty of this apologia. If you don't believe me on this (Rich, for instance, had doubted that anyone was defending the actions at Ruby Ridge), I suggest reading "A Force Upon the Plain", which is by the AJC's person on hate groups. In it, he calls the actions of the USG at Ruby Ridge as, at worst, a mistake - and a more justifiable mistake in his view than Weaver's not showing up for his court hearing. In almost all cases in the chapter on Ruby Ridge, he states the government's side of the story as fact, and uses quotes - prominently labelled as from "white supremacists" - to describe the Weavers' side of the story.

profound ignorance of political realities or with their own private dictionaries.

If you believe that my definition of racism is out of my "own private dictionary," I invite you to see Webster's Second College Edition New World Dictionary of the English Language: Racism. 1. Same as racialism (sense 1). 2. Any program or practice of racial discrimination, segregation, persecution, and domination, based on racialism. Racialism. 1. A doctrine or teaching, without scientific support, that claims to find racial differences in character, intelligence, etcetera, that asserts the superiority of one race over another or others, and that seeks to maintain the supposed purity of a race or the races. 2. same as racism (sense 2). The second definition of racism is actually _more_ restrictive than my definition. I call someone practicing "racial discrimination, segregation, persecution, _and_ domination" a racist, whether or not they believe in some superiority of some race. I do appreciate the inclusion in Webster's of "without scientific support," since I am a scientist.

The whole argument of racism vs. white separatism vs. white suppremicist seems more to come from people who argue whether someone is a Baptist or a Christian or a Southern Baptist or a Protestant. (In mathematical set theory one would trace the fallacy in thinking to the false idea that any given element of a set cannot be the element of more than one set. Thus, if (X is a member of Y) it cannot also be a member of Z.)

I regard racism and racial supremacism as two sides of the same thing. Racial separatism overlaps with racism, but someone who practices one is not necessarily in favor of the other. I do not dispute that someone who is a racial separatist can also be a racist, and indeed often is. I simply am not willing to condem someone as a racist when the only organizations calling him such have clear motives to call what happened at Ruby Ridge something other than premeditated murder.

I understand that James D. is not accusing me of being a "child molester" but merely using it as a reductio ad adsurdem argument.

Let me continue in this vein.

The issue of child molestation was dragged in and had no relevance on the immediate political isues of Weaver et al.

But imagine people are arguing about the deep fundamental differnces between someone who is a "child molester" vs. a "pedophile" vs. a "boy lover."

The analogy works quite well, in some ways. A pedophile who carries out his (usually his) desires is a child molester. A boy lover may be a pedophile, and may if a pedophile be a child molester. But I have known someone who had sexual attractions to underage boys but controlled them - he regarded carrying out such urges as wrong (I agree with him, if anyone is wondering). I would not call him a child molester. -Allen