Following his plea deals in Birmingham and Atlanta yesterday, Eric Rudolph released a "manifesto" through his attorneys. It's excerpted several places on the web, but it might be worth your while to read the entire statement for insight into Rudolph's thought process. Here's a few snippets you won't find on CNN or Fox:...Absent any corroborative fact or witness to explain why I was in Birmingham that day, a city I have never visited before, and a good reason for fleeing to the woods for five years, I was fighting an uphill battle. Add to these two paramount facts Washington's junk science about explosive residues, a media obsessed with the specter of right wing extremist violence, we had an extremely difficult case to win. But Washington had a problem and this is why they entered into this deal.
The problem that they had was that a significant minority of the population, especially here in Northern Alabama, regarded what happened there at the abortion facility on that day of Jan. 29, 1998, as morally justified...
...At various times in history men and women of good conscience have had to decide when the lawfully constituted authorities have overstepped their moral bounds and forfeited their right to rule...
...There is no more fundamental duty for a moral citizen than to protect the innocent from assault. This in inherit in the values of all higher civilizations. You have the right, the responsibility and the duty to come to the defense of the innocent when the innocent are under assault. Would you protect your children from the clutches of a murderer? Would you protect your neighbors' children when they were under assault? If you answered yes to both of these, then you must support the use of force as justified in attempting to prevent the murder that is abortion...
...There are those who would say to me that the system in Washington works. They say that pro-life forces are making progress, that eventually Roe v. Wade will be overturned, that the culture of life will ultimately win over the majority of Americans and that the horror of abortion will be outlawed. Yet, in the meantime thousands die everyday...
Along with abortion, another assault upon the integrity of American society is the concerted effort to legitimize the practice of homosexuality...This effort is commonly known as the homosexual agenda. Whether it is gay marriage, homosexual adoption, hate crimes laws including gays, or the attempt to introduce a homosexual normalizing curriculum into our schools, all of these efforts should be ruthlessly opposed. The existence of our culture depends upon it...
There was a time in the not too distant past when most reasonable people would have pooh-poo'd Eric Rudolph an ideological loon (at least in polite company) on par with Theodore Kaczynski. But then, even the UniBomber had his admirers. In reading Rudolph's manifesto, though, it's pretty clear that his statements fit more or less hand-in-glove with recent loony statements coming from "respectable" fringe lunatics.
Om-day T-Lay, anyone?
And there will come a time in the not too distant future when Rudolph's actions will be openly lionized by the Fox News-approved morons camped out on the periphery of the radical right. When Eric Rudolph entered his plea deal, he did so with no expectation that he'd spend the rest of his life behind bars. He knows that someone will eventually spring the lock for him, and he'll walk free again one day.
There are a lot of people out there who, if not overtly agreeing with Rudolph's actions, at least sympathize with the "moral forces" that drove him. Some of those people are running the country.
