Senator Orrin Hatch                                    April 7, 1995
135 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C.  20510

Senator Hatch:

I've been told you're contemplating hearings on Waco, Ruby Ridge, and
the agencies that made those place-names infamous, but that you want
to hear from voters that such hearings are desired.  When I heard
this, it occurred to me to wonder why.  As a writer and thinker
concerned with issues of individual liberty, I believe the federal
assault on the Branch Davidians will prove to be the definitive event
of our times, and it's difficult for me to comprehend your hesitation.

I know many who are obsessed with events at Waco and pore endlessly
over the videotapes frame by frame, generating theories about what
happened there.  But one needn't investigate the details of the
incident to understand that it would never have happened if the
government hadn't determined, for whatever reason -- in a nation
founded on the inalienability of rights, there's no acceptable excuse
-- to violate the rights of the people who lived there.

On the other hand, if we ignore what happened there or make excuses
for it, what is there to distinguish us from Germans who suspected
what was going on in the death-camps and chose, for whatever reason,
to ignore it or make excuses for it?  That was their test as a
civilization, and they failed it.

Waco is ours.

The Nazis were eventually shown the error of their ways at Nuremburg
-- some of them at the end of a rope.  Those who were unperturbed by
what they planned to do at Waco to the lives, liberty, and property of
others must be shown, in the harshest manner possible, that the Bill
of Rights is the highest law of the land.  They must learn -- and in
the process help us to instruct others -- that there are penalties
for violating that law.  Otherwise, we, too, as individuals and as a
civilization, will have failed the test.

Sincerely,
L. Neil Smith
cc: 8402 Federal Building
125 South State Street
Salt Lake City, Utah 84138