A case of self-serving
fanaticism

Everyone takes their own moral from the execution of Timothy McVeigh. Mine -- as a journalist with 25 years in newspapers, wire services and TV news -- reinforces why I have lasted that long in this business.

People need information from varied and dispassionate sources to help guide their lives and their moral decisions. Violent fanatics such as McVeigh form their views based on a narrow range of venomous tracts, then reinforce those views among a few like-minded people.

Fanaticism rarely survives a serious consideration of the varying opinions that you find every day in the pages of this and other newspapers. Flawed as we are, we are part of the glue of civil society.

--Steven Petranik

---