‘Thirteen years ago the federal government of the United
States ended its altercation with a group of peaceful religious separatists – a
conflict the government had initiated – by driving a tank through the Branch
Davidians’ home and church, pumping the interior with poisonous gas, and
keeping the fire engines at a distance while the building and the people inside
burned. 

For many Americans, Waco
represented the nightmare their government had become. In those days, it was
the right that spoke out against unchecked government power, erosions of the
Bill of Rights, and the imperial executive. Such criticism was tempered in its
radicalism over the next decade, for a variety of reasons.

The most dramatic was probably
the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, which occurred
on Waco's two-year anniversary, saving the Clinton presidency from a populace
becoming wary of government power as its partisans successfully blamed the
terrorist attack on anti-government attitudes. We were to believe that even the
mild criticism of government heard on mainstream conservative radio was aiding
the terrorists. In more recent times, as I discussed a year ago in my article “Waco, Oklahoma City,
and the Post-9/11 Left-Right Dynamic,” we have seen a similar trend going
in the opposite direction, with the right siding with the omnipotent state and
accusing the left of siding with those who want to destroy America. 

Yet Waco is neither a leftwing
nor rightwing issue. It is instead an issue that transcends such political
categories and cuts to the most profound of questions as to what kind of
country this is, what kind it should be, and the very meanings of liberty and
tyranny.’ 

Waco & The
Bipartisan Police State