{"id":63,"date":"2003-06-02T09:19:54","date_gmt":"2003-06-02T14:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/63.html"},"modified":"2003-06-02T09:19:54","modified_gmt":"2003-06-02T14:19:54","slug":"disturbing-reactions-to-eric-rudolph-in-north-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/disturbing-reactions-to-eric-rudolph-in-north-carolina\/","title":{"rendered":"Disturbing reactions to Eric Rudolph in North Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"

The capture and arrest of Eric Rudolph is unquestionably good news. A fugitive for five years, Rudolph is what can only be described as a terrorist.<\/p>\n

Rudolph, driven by his hatred of those unlike himself, appears to have detonated bombs at two women’s clinics, a gay nightclub, and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.<\/p>\n

I can’t help but be horrified, however, by the reactions from Rudolph’s neighbors<\/a> in and around Murphy, N.C.<\/p>\n

“He’s a Christian and I’m a Christian and he dedicated his life to fighting abortion,” said Crystal Davis, a 25-year-old mother of four in Murphy. “Those are our values. And I don’t see what he did as a terrorist act.”<\/p>\n

The New York Times reported that Davis’ sympathetic remarks were “echoed, person after person, in this sawmill and cow-pasture hamlet.” People in the area started selling T-shirts a few years ago with slogans such as “Run, Rudolph, Run,” and “Eric Rudolph — Hide and Seek Champion of the World.” The Times report noted that many residents expressed “respect for the wily survivalist.”<\/p>\n

Respect<\/i>? These people respect a murdering terrorist?<\/p>\n

Or how about the diner owner in nearby Peachtree<\/a>, N.C., who feels compelled to “help” Rudolph and will be starting an Eric Rudolph Legal Defense Fund, which many of her customers have already committed to supporting.<\/p>\n

Worse than just admiration for a madman, these same folks admit privately that they’ve helped Rudolph as he hid from authorities, offering him food and assistance while on the lamb. There’s a name for this — it’s called aiding and abetting a known terrorist.<\/p>\n

I’ve long struggled with the idea that America’s cultural divisions are only on the surface, that our ideological differences are merely superficial and that all Americans share a certain sense of fairness and decency. Yet when I hear about the sympathies for a monster like Rudolph, I begin to realize that I share nothing with these people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The capture and arrest of Eric Rudolph is unquestionably good news. A fugitive for five years, Rudolph is what can only be described as a terrorist. Rudolph, driven by his hatred of those unlike himself, appears to have detonated bombs at two women’s clinics, a gay nightclub, and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. I can’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}