Letters to the Editor.

Ehrenreich's McVeigh

Once again, I wish I could write like Barbara Ehrenreich ("The Making of McVeigh," July issue). I have been trying to tell people that McVeigh learned about "collateral damage" in the military. Ehrenreich once again grasped a complex and horrifying social truth and illuminated it with intelligence and power.

This column should be assigned reading for all political leaders and citizens.

Carolyn Keith Milwaukee, Wisconsin I was very disappointed to read Barbara Ehrenreich's piece on Timothy McVeigh. In a society that lavished almost celebrity-like attention on this man, I was disturbed at the way in which Ehrenreich chose to add her own voice to the crescendo.

Did she think that she was one-upping the mainstream press by taking a different approach?

Does she feel smug and proud that she has been able to use the life of McVeigh as a stump from which to express her frustration at our government?

While most people in this world feel the need to try and extract meaning out of seemingly senseless tragedies, I cannot support her self-serving attempt to uncover the simple meaning of a logical irony in McVeigh's actions.

She makes overtures to the "potentially useful functions of government," and she recognizes that minorities are the "most common victims" of our federal government. But her critique expresses a brand of radicalism that does not seem at all in keeping with the views of The Progressive or most of its readers.

Wanting to fight against those views that marginalize McVeigh as "maniacal," Ehrenreich reduces the political difficulties of the last twenty years, as well as some very complicated problems, to a naive simplicity.

How helpful is it to praise McVeigh and conclude simply that the government produces warriors and killers?

Mass murder is the natural result of minimum wages, no unions, and missile defense shields?

What does it serve to sum up the meaning of the Oklahoma bombing in the idea that the government got what it deserved, it just got it from the wrong guy because he wasn't a minority?

The article is extreme in its views and reduces the complex journey of one man to the logical outgrowth of conservative politics.

Daniel Holt Buffalo, New York Among the violent and militaristic acts of the federal government that led to "The Making of McVeigh," Barbara Ehrenreich includes, along with Iraq, Serbia, and Waco, "the bizarre raid on the relatives of Elian Gonzales in Miami." Could she kindly tell us what the...