The Virginian-Pilot 
                            THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT  
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, May 7, 1995                    TAG: 9505060388
SECTION: COMMENTARY               PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   82 lines

RIGHT-WING CATALYSTS? PUNDITS SUCH AS RUSH LIMBAUGH AND NEWT GINGRICH HAVE STIRRED ANTI-GOVERNMENT TALK THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING

So what do you say? Can we blame the Newt and the Rush for the right-wing wackos who apparently took it on themselves to blow up innocent women, men and children in Oklahoma City?

As purveyors of rabid talk against the government, do Gingrich, Limbaugh, Liddy and other leaders of the New Right bear some responsibility for those who think the government is out to get them in more ways than with just taxes?

Yeah. At least a little. The talk-radio hosts and the new congressional leaders did not thrust guns in people's hands. They didn't advocate overthrowing the government, or directly cook up the various, far-out theories, like the one that United Nations troops are set to take over the country.

But people like Limbaugh are linked to people like Timothy McVeigh in their refusal or inability to distinguish between good government and bad government. More importantly, the New Right's hostility to the federal government blurs into almost an endorsement of actively resisting it.

You can see that in the Right's warm embrace of G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North, two people who probably broke the law to achieve political ends. It's something the nation, and respectable conservatives, need to look at and get a handle on.

Several commentators have compared the New Right's dilemma with the one shared by the Left in the 1960s and early '70s. It's an appropriate comparison.

Let us recall those crazy days. You had: the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army and various other lesser lights in the radical left advocating and predicting some type of armed confrontation with the government.

Pretty similar to the Michigan Militia, really, if one gets rid of the left-wing, right-wing labels. There's something to learn there.

Meanwhile, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern and other, more moderate liberals were pushing the end of the Vietnam War, not armed revolution, and other policies that history have vindicated as correct ones, many might say.

So in one sense, it's certainly not correct to blame soft-spoken McGovern for the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapping Patty Hearst. Nor is it correct, in that same light, to blame Phil Gramm for some of the dementia spewing forth from above Texas.

But both McGovern and the Black Panthers were products of a particular trend, time and culture. Threads of shared sympathy and ideas run between the two, as they do now between some of the actors in the conservative movement.

Remember how Tom Wolfe lampooned Leonard Bernstein and slinky-dressed New York women for inviting indicted Black Panthers to decorate cocktail parties in an ambience Wolfe labeled ``Radical Chic''?

I wonder if some similar essay awaits to be written as some Republican fat cats respectfully invite the Gun Owners of America, a to-the-right-of-the-NRA gun group, to their dinners?

Along with the very worthy causes and achievements of the 1960s - opposing the Vietnam War, promoting a more spiritual and kinder culture and producing a lot of great music - there also existed a blanket condemnation of authority. Even more moderate leaders in the left were confused about what sorts of authority were appropriate or necessary.

That attitude helped produced the Weathermen and the Black Panthers, even if Benjamin Spock didn't advocate fighting in the streets.

Ironically, the current right wing is similarly confused about authority - the federal government's - despite the right's promotion of family values and more rigid social structures.

Gingrich, Gramm and Pat Robertson go beyond advocating reforming welfare and eliminating the Energy Department. They almost say the authority of the federal government is not a legitimate one. From there, it's just a few more steps to the Michigan Militia.

You can see that in Virginia. When Republican leaders here embraced North, did they realize the values they expressed by promoting someone who probably broke laws to get what he wanted?

These are legitimate philosophical confusions, not just problems of style and rhetoric. That makes them harder to fix. But that's all the more reason they be examined. It could lead not only to the Republicans having less blame for any future deaths by right-wing terrorist attacks, but to less deaths. by CNB