I was a bit surprised today to open up my copy of USA Today to see a guest column defending the Earth Liberation and Animal Libertation Front. Steven Zak’s “Conservative rhetoric makes mockery of U.S. ‘solidarity'” attacks conservatives for implying that progressives who do not agree with them are unpatriotic. But on his way to that argument, Zak slips in these paragraphs,
In particular, I’ve long been a staunch environmentalist. I believe in humility toward nature and other forms of life. If you want to call that a sort of religious view, so be it; but it’s one conservatives seem to have about as much tolerance for as the Taliban does for Christianity.
The Earth Liberation Front, along with the Animal Liberation Front, about which I once wrote for The Atlantic Monthly, have been frequently described as terrorists posing as activists and similar to al-Qaeda — including on this page, where a column by Richard Berman railed against “these homegrown terrorists.” An editorial in The Washington Times also called these groups “terrorists . . . enjoying the freedoms of the United States,” and it wanred of their “online training camps.
Whew! Below is the text of a letter I sent to USA Today,
Editor, USA Today,
I was reading along and agreeing with much of Steven Zak’s op-ed about conservatives attacking progressives as unpatriotic until I read Zak complain that commentators are calling the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front “homegrown terrorists.”
When extremist pro-life individuals and groups burn down abortion clinics, is that not an act of terrorism? When extremist racists burn down black churches, is that not an act of terrorism? Why, then, are animal rights terrorists who burn down research laboratories not terrorists?
Presumably if George W. Bush or The Weekly Standard argued that all research into finding a cure for AIDS and other diseases should be stopped immediately, progressives would be outraged. I was not aware that support for violent destruction of laboratories researching AIDS and other diseases was a progressive position.
Sincerely,
Brian Carnell
Source:
Conservative rhetoric makes mockery of U.S. ‘solidarity.’ Steven Zak, USA Today, January 23, 2002.