The point is that there can be times where it is both legally and morally justifiable to resist the police, up to and including using deadly force. You’d probably die if you tried, or at least face serious consequences and in many cases I’d say it’s not a prudent thing to do.
So did Thoreau. Should he have been burned to death too?
Wow, you totally misrepresented the context for your political ideology, didn’t you? I guess when the compound was surrounded for months, those inside thought the ATF were just playing the world’s most realistic game of Cowboy and Indians? Koresh and those loonies had a long time to surrender. They did not. Then there were reports of child abuse inside the compound, forcing the government to act.
Everyone inside should have came out a month ago with their hands in their air and a phone number to their lawyer but instead they wanted to pretend they were the good guys in a movie and barricade themselves in against the cops. Koresh was fully responsible for the deaths of those people. The ATF did use inappropriate weapons but I have no problems with the tank busting through the door
Every few weeks we hear of US cops shooting or choking a black person. There are a lot of cases we don’t hear about. A few weeks ago I saw a Youtube of a black woman walking along a California freeway and a cop comes up to her and just starts beating on her furiously for a long time. I don’t know if it made the news.
The police are out of control in this country, but Waco wasn’t one of those instances.
Of course it was. The Branch Davidians may have fucked up hugely but the ATF and FBI did too. The difference is that it wasn’t local police, who seem to fuck up only when black people are involved.
blindboyard was clearly referring to the shooting that started the siege, not the raid which ended it.
…holy crap. I had no idea that the FBI negotiators were so…incompetent. Those transcripts were cringe-worthy. I never really knew much about Waco apart from memories of old news reports. But those snippets of transcripts are telling.
Even before those cases there was the Montana Freemen, which was handled about as gently to the point of ‘why is the FBI even here’? Pretty light touch for a crew that deserved nothing but the dankest of dank prison cells.
You…kinda missed the whole point of his post, didn’t you? Even the part you quoted where he said “At Waco they arrived and opened fire through the front door. Literally, through the closed door.” “Arrived” as in “the start of the siege”, not the ending.
In both instances, the federal government had valid reasons for concern, and in both cases, they handled the situations as badly as they could have.
I have no sympathy for white separatists like Randy Weaver, and little for oddball cult leaders like David Koresh. But it didn’t appear to me then (and still doesn’t) that a bloodbath was necessary. Koresh, in particular, was NOT particularly reclusive. If there was a good reason to arrest him, he could have been arrested in town with a minimum of fuss.
It looked to me as if the Feds were dying to get themselves on the 6 o’clock news, or on*** Cops/Rescue 911.***
Unless he made a habit of carrying all his illegal guns and abused children with him when he went into town, they’d still have had to raid the compound to get at them anyway.
Sure, I’m not saying each and every police officer is a moral giant. But we do hear about these offenses and thankfully the press watches, and so should we. When we put humans in the positions of power, we can expect abuses. The people need to watch over these in power and make sure the complaint process works.
Yes, the police want more power, they’re always first in line when it comes to advocating against guns. Taxpayers can just cut the funding, less police, less power. We were just bare bones police department here through the recession and … pfffft … civilization didn’t come crashing down just because we had to drive to the department instead of a cop coming out.
He wasn’t a white separatist. He was in the hills because his wife thought the bankers and the Illuminati were trying to set up a New World Order. He just went to the white separatist compound because they were the nearest potential drinking buddies.
Lol, I guess I did! I thought he meant arrived as in arrived at the door near the end of the siege. My mistake then
That’s what he says. It’s not very convincing because (1) there were several towns between the Weavers’ cabin and the Aryan Nations compound, and (2) Aryan Nations prohibited alcohol on its premises.
Beyond that, “bankers”, “Illuminati” and “New World Order” are all code words for Jews. Weaver was pretty open about being a white separatist. What he denied was being a white supremacist - he liked other races fine, just didn’t want to mix with them.
Wait–this is GD. You’re not allowed to be reasonable and show good humor about an honest mistake. I’m almost certain there’s a rule against it somewhere. 
Uh, I mock your value system. You also appear foolish in the eyes of others. Past instances in which I have professed to like you were fraudulent. I have had intercourse with your spouse or significant other
Good enough? 
Mods: That was an old Simpsons joke
Pretty much what I had read, too. As morally repugnant anyone might find a racist, I much prefer the ones who go away and live quietly in the woods, and mind their own business, than the ones who march about in public, with the swastika tattoos and “Heil, Hitler!” nonsense.
Why, thank you for that fine example of authentic frontier gibberish.
xtiml, I’m not even sure what the heck this was an attempt to say, but hate speech is forbidden on the SDMB. I’m giving you a warning for this. Please don’t do so again.