Ex-America

Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and the movements and changes in the world around him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, ‘This I am today; that I will be tomorrow.’ The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.

-Louis L’Amour, The Walking Drum

We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the great countries of the world — a monster country, one might say, along with others such as China, India, the recent Soviet Union, and Brazil. And there is a real question as to whether “bigness” in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.

-George F. Kennan, Around the Cragged Hill : A Personal and Political Philosophy (1994)

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

– Jack London

Oddly, one of McVeigh’s former neighbors on the cell block, in a prison in Colorado where he was held until last summer, was another notorious criminal: Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

They found they had a lot in common although, as McVeigh says, Kaczynski is “far left” while he is “far right” politically.

“I found that, in a way that I didn’t realize, that we were much alike in that all we ever wanted or all we wanted out of life was the freedom to live our own lives however we chose to.”

 

–CBS News, 2001