There were mistakes made at Ruby Ridge and Waco that eventually resulted in hundreds of deaths. Those mistakes have never been discussed. Those mistakes center on basic principles of the establishment of any governed community and we're dealing with the debris 20 years later.
First: And this is very important: Society has a right and a duty to defend itself. Secondly: All governments are ceded a monopoly on the employment of violence. All arguments concerning the Constitution and civil redress do eventually meet the reality of first principles as well they should. There is a reason why violating first principles is recognized as dangerous. It is the first step on a "slippery slope". This particular slope ended at Oklahoma City a few years later but that's not really the end of it.
In both instances, Ruby Ridge and Mt Carmel, society was confronted with overt violence by violent malefactors. These malefactors had been brought to the attention of duly organized authority via their own anti-social activities centering on the advocacy of violence against society. Their petit motivations are completely unimportant. They rendered their own message irrelevant by confronting first principles and no one in authority caught it.
Randy Weaver et al were given 11 days to surrender after they shot a federal official. To be sure his wife was killed and well she should have been. Oh, she was holding her infant child! Isn't that just too affecting an image? Who was holding the children at the day care center in Oklahoma City when they were murdered? The idea we ever paid Randy Weaver anything but a bullet in the brain is an insult to common sense. Had those people been treated as the violent, anti-social thugs they aspired to be and in fact were, immediately, the rest would not have happened.
The Branch Davidians were gun dealers. They lawfully dealt in mail order guns. They appealed directly to others with the same anti-government, end- times philosophies. When confronted by lawful authority about suspect transactions they responded by murdering 4 federal agents.
Here's an interesting aside. If anyone who cares to could open their own government-funded school what kind of school do you suppose these people would have used your tax dollars to operate? Someone should ask Betsy DeVos that question.
What did happen was David Koresh, who was clearly irrational, was given 51 days to negotiate an end to the siege set off by the Davidian's murder of law enforcement officers.
The negotiations failed for two reasons. There never should have been a negotiation of any type. That in and of itself was irrational. The amount of force necessary to apprehend the murderers of our agents should have been immediately assembled and employed. No lives were saved for the second reason. Koresh was irrational and failing the duty to order and society did nothing but embolden other irrational people. That should have been foreseen. Just because circumstances have been imposed that make people loath to do their duty does not mean they shouldn't do their duty or make it less of a duty and this is a glaring example of why. That needs to be recognized going forward.
Two years later, to the day and in commemoration of the date, the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed by malefactors encouraged by the mistakes at Ruby Ridge and Waco. The ATF agents involved in the Waco siege were based at that building. The bizarre ethos created by treating Weaver and Koresh as something other than common criminals killed 168 totally innocent people including 19 children. That's a totally unacceptable outcome caused by a failure to understand the basic ideas behind government itself. In this case those ignored ideas are: Society has the right and the duty to protect itself and government thru duly constituted authority has the sole license to employ violence. If the protection of those basic concepts isn't immediate and zealous it will uniformly lead to trouble as we have seen.
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