I had a Ted Kaczynski moment reading Eric Rudolph's jailhouse manifesto today. Upon consuming the Unabomber's screed nearly a decade ago, I was struck by its author's intelligence and articulateness. Again, today: How could someone so bright commit acts so dark?
But then I'm reminded that intelligence and goodness aren't synonyms. The Left fails to understand this, fetishizing Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, and other radical murderers because they can turn a phrase (and they support all the "correct" causes). For liberals, the brain has supplanted the soul as man's essence.
It's fairly common and hardly brave to dismiss the words of extremist murderers as incoherent scribblings. But the uncomfortable truth is smarts aren't kryptonite to evil. Olympic-bomber Eric Rudolph and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski prove this.
There is a self-serving impulse among conservatives to attach every negative attribute to the author of such evil. One word is sufficient: evil. Humanists don't like the term evil, prefering words that exonerate mankind--crazy, insane, imbalanced. For Marxists, it's need or greed that drives man to crime. Mainstream liberals, faithful to the dogma of the rehabilatative power of education, prescribe years of schooling to cure the criminal. The common denominator is a denial of man's free will. Eric Rudolph, Theodore Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, Karl Armstrong, and other domestic terrorists chose to murder people. External factors didn't force them into the choice. The cult of intellectualism frequently elevates such figures because their crimes served a cause and were inspired by reflection. When the crime doesn't mesh with the egghead's ideological predispositions, the criminal's intellect vanishes.
Eric Rudolph and Theodore Kaczyncki are murderers who deserve to spend the remainder of their lives in prison. They are also murderers who thought long and hard about their crimes before committing them. We shouldn't be afraid to admit this. Years of premeditation hardly makes their acts more admirable than spur-of-the-moment slayings done to satisfy less lofty aims.
The Kaczynski story is compelling indeed. It seems that only the dozen or so individuals who have actually taken the time to read his story know about all the psychological testing he was subjected to at Harvard, and the very strong possibility that the scars from those tests lead directly to his misguided actions. The fact that the details about those tests have never been released, coupled with the orchestrated efforts to prevent Kaczynski's own autobiography from ever seeing the light of day, should leave sufficient questions about just what is being kept from the public's eye... (I never met a conspiract theory I didn't like!)
I do love the image of poor Ted, standing out in his crude Montana carrot bed, shaking his fist or pointing his 22-caliber rifle at the airliner flying overhead, shouting "Damn jets!!"
I hear ya on the E-word. I tried using it in my high school religion class a few years back (religion, mind you) and the teacher disapproved of the word. Now, I can understand a fear of Puritan connotations, but call a spade a spade.
I haven't read the Unabomber's manifesto but I would like to. Such a bright yet twisted mind is horrifically fascinating.
Here you go, Ben.
Ya know there is a victim of his that no one talks about; and it is a tragic victim indeed.
From an article I published called the Back story which tells of a suspect from that time whos life was ruined.
Just one more victim of a twisted mind.
