You seem to be saying something, but I can never figure out just what it is.

What I'm saying is that it's immoral to play kissy-face, even intellectual kissy-face, with murderers.

Somehow this is controversial. But you can see it easily if you flip the political polarities. Hence, Eric Rudolph.

Something obvious you can't see is called a "blind spot." Is there anything else in your blind spot?

I disagree with both their motives and actions but I still don't "see it easily". OK, it's the right thing to do to lock these people away for the rest of their lives. But if there's some intellectual profit to be gained in corresponding with them, I see no harm in doing so. Your conception of "icky" is reminiscent of that of a five-year-old, and has all the intellectual and moral sophistication of the same.

You don't think you're proving the point of my Eric Rudolph analogy?

Ie: you don't feel perfectly fair, rational, and justified in applying the "icky," simplistic, five-year-old algorithm to Eric Rudolph?

If not: you don't agree that this remarkable tolerance for violent right-wing extremism is unusual among your social and intellectual peers?

This applies to everyone who responded below. Good luck in composing an answer that evades the questionnaire...

> If not: you don't agree that this remarkable tolerance for violent right-wing extremism is unusual among your social and intellectual peers?

I don't worry about being unusual, I worry about being right. Lots of people are intellectual and emotional five-year-olds. That's not my problem, but whether I'm one of them is my problem.

> If not: you don't agree that this remarkable tolerance for violent right-wing extremism is unusual among your social and intellectual peers?

That's an interesting point - could you expound on it? I have a few theories myself, and I'm curious what you think the reason is.

It's pretty simple - Anglophone North America is a left-wing polity and always has been, its deviant and extinct Confederate branch aside. You won't find a single leftist trope that isn't repeated over and over again in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. As Earl Browder put it, "Communism is 20th-century Americanism."

This is why we're all supposed to be all nuanced and shit when it comes to Communist atrocities, but when it's time for the Fascist atrocities everyone has to stand up and yell HITLER HITLER HITLER. Precisely like a five-year-old.

It's just a sort of national lookin' after #1. We naturally ignore the sins closest to us and focus on those of others. Left is "self" and right is "other." Otherwise, we would need to express genuine collective guilt rather than dime-a-dozen collective contempt.

I think Theodore Kascynzki would be insulted by your implication that he is a leftist.

I understand why left-wing violence, lawlesness, etc are tolerated or encouraged - I'm asking why you think corresponding with Kaczynski does not bring the same scorn upon a person as corresponding with Rudolph would. Is it because people don't understand Kaczynski's intentions/thoughts (indeed, as reading the comments on this post would easily demonstrate)? Is it because they fundamentally agree with him, regardless of his contempt for liberals? After all, destruction of technology / industry has traditionally been a left-wing project in the U.S.

The first half of your first sentence answers the second, doesn't it? You could ask exactly the same questions with regard to John Brown - another classic American figure.

The supposed distinction between the "moderate" and "extremist" left is wildly overblown. There's no social exclusion, etc, in either direction. Nobody cares or is surprised about President Obama's association with Bill Ayers. Or, for that matter, Thoreau's with John Brown. Again, there's really nothing new here.

(I do think it's appropriate that in the nation of John Brown, we all need to walk through metal detectors to get on an airplane. Nothing could be more American than terrorism.)

Define "murderers". Depending on how widely you spread that blanket you could cover every government employee in the world. Include "or through inaction" as a modifier to your definition and you and I are just as guilty.

Murder almost always is defined to include premeditation (malice aforethought). So you're in the clear, along with most every government employee in the world.

I'm assuming you refer to the teacher's ongoing correspondence with Kaczynski which one imagines means a lot to the prisoner, and could be seen as some form of 'comfort'.

Do you see the need to examine the arguments at all? Would it be ok for the teacher to discuss the manifesto as a text without the dialogue with Kaczynski?

As far as I can tell, there is a simple and elegant explanation for the discrepancy: Rudolph (and Breivik, and most of the present crop of right-wing terrorists) is an intellectual zero while Kaczynski is not.

If Jack the Ripper or Jeffrey Dahmer had left behind something like Kaczynski's manifesto (and later prison essays), some respectable intellectuals would pinch their noses and study them.