Gingrich, Clinton on Militias

* Regarding Newt Gingrich’s statement urging us to understand the rantings of the right (May 8): How nice Gingrich has suddenly gotten so sentimental about understanding people’s anger. He actually sounded like those pointy-headed liberal professors he used to dislike in the 1960s, defending radical groups as well.

Of course he wasn’t at all like that during the Los Angeles riots or other fits of anger. Perhaps it is because some of his close brethren stepped a bit over the line in Oklahoma City.

Sorry Newt, planning to blow up federal buildings, believing concentration camps are being set up all across the country and that the U.N. is going to invade us led by Gurkha troops are extreme on any planet (wherever you came from).

CHRIS CHABOT

West Hollywood

* If the “Speaker speaketh too much” (editorial, May 9), then The Times is guilty of listening too little. Speaker Gingrich’s comment on “genuine fear in rural America,” when not taken out of context, was that giving more power to the FBI and taking away some more of our rights may only fuel these far-right elements. Your views that the Speaker’s remarks were “chilling” and “reckless” worry me more than 12 FBI agents breaking down my front door.

LARRY NOGGLE

Yorba Linda

* Re “Clinton Denounces Militant Militias as False Patriots,” May 6:

It is an outrage that President Clinton insists, “There is nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country.” Does he expect U.S. citizens to maintain an unconditional love--even when they believe their government is guilty of misdeeds? Those are demands of totalitarianism, not democracy. I would ask of him: Did he “love” his government when he fled from service in the Vietnam War?

Love for the United States can only mean love for what the country stands for: the principles on which it was founded, as expressed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But over the decades our government has managed to pervert and distort the very laws that once made it great.

Clinton’s remarks are a travesty of conscience--and dangerous. If one Timothy McVeigh exists, who is to say that there can’t be others: angry young men--”loose cannons”--with violent, criminal tendencies? We must ask: What drove McVeigh to commit such a grievous act?

LISA CHAKRABARTI

Los Angeles

* It’s time for thoughtful Americans to stand up, as the audience did at the Michigan State commencement, and applaud President Clinton for his denunciation of extremist militant groups as false patriots for their attacks on the government. This is not an argument over free speech. It’s an issue of the survival of this nation.

Since the bombing in Oklahoma City, the “Marks of Michigan” and scores of other “militia movement” spokesmen, along with the radio talk show folks, have hardly lacked for public and media forums to offer their explanations and rationalizations for their often apocalyptic views. They have a right to speak; so do people who oppose them. We additionally have the obligation, as individuals and through our civic and professional organizations, to expose the real threat to our country posed by the militiamen and allied groups.

What’s needed now is a real national debate, with both sides being heard, on how to deal with the very real problems our nation faces.

SAUL HALPERT

Sherman Oaks