THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 24, 1995 TAG: 9504240038
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Images of hate and love fought for dominance in Oklahoma City after an explosion stripped the face of a nine-story building. Love won.
The hateful bomb blast hadn't subsided before workers from a neighboring building were racing across the street and scrambling through ruins to help survivors.
From America came an outpouring. Schoolchildren's letters were taken into the ruins and read to well-nigh exhausted rescue workers who cried and went back to work.
The struggle to save lives and comfort those bereft of darlings was America at its best, as it is most of the time and has been since the founding and will be forever - or it would cease to be America and become an alien place.
A woman, face bruised, noted that the blast was set by someone who hated the government.
``I'm the government,'' she said in wonder, ``and you're the government. Everybody is the government, even those who bombed this building. We are the government.''
Targeting the federal building, the perpetrators attacked the United States. Used to be when people kept railing about the country, they were advised to like it or leave it.
We must try to make America better - it is a growing creation - but the way to go at it is through the channels laid out by Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, Madison.
They didn't do it with bombs. It took lots of debate. Most always does to get things done right. But they were remarkably civil. Their debates are a guide to us because they didn't waste time calling names.
Today congressmen, a vehement part of the big government they deplore, are given often to bombast and personal attacks. A new forum, network talk shows, are sewers of invective. No one would curb them. Free speech is our final liberty.
But we had best exercise some humility and recognize our frailties. Even as we cry big government, citizens in each segment want to protect their turf. Various factions oppose fees for grazing and mining and defend subsidies for farming. Hereabouts we favor a big Navy.
Our first impulse was to blame Mideast terrorists; but the terrorists proved to be home-grown. So we can work, on our own without the bother of borders, to uncover them and examine their paramilitary breeding ground.
Amid tragedy, the president has become relevant. In crisis we look to the head of the nation's household, Democrat or Republican. The president met the test and the first lady lent a healing touch.
``You have lost too much,'' President Clinton said Sunday at the memorial services, ``but you have not lost everything, and you have certainly not lost America, for we will stand with you for as many tomorrows as it takes.''
You think of those sweet lives lost - husbands, wives, children - and wonder if our nation's great debates can't occur without a lowering of our voices and with less rancor. For a while, they may.
KEYWORDS: OKLAHOMA CITY BOMB EXPLOSION FEDERAL BUILDING by CNB