Andries,

Will you ever wake up and smell the coffee? Here's part of that stupid interview.  Sure, there was a tactical / strategic problem at WACO -- all Koresh's fault, in my opinion, but I know reasonable people have squabbled over this -- but look at the big, fat net she tries to cast!  As before, I dare you to actually discuss NRM scholarship for a change, Andries.  All you do is nibble around the edges.  It'll be a good conversation, if you're ever up for it.  Meanwhile, here's Barker making a total fool of herself:

Barker: There do tend to be some more or less predictable processes. Quite a lot of work has been done looking at the tragedies which have occurred, as when David Koresh and his followers, the Branch Davidians, were burned in their compound outside Waco, and in movements like the People's Temple, the Solar Temple and, most frightening of all perhaps, Aum Shinrikyo setting off sarin gas in the Tokyo Underground, and, less so but still to some extent, Heavens Gate, where all the members committed suicide. What can be observed in most of these tragedies is a process which sociologists sometimes call "deviance amplification" building up. The antagonists on each side behave rather badly, and that gives permission for the other side to behave more badly, so you get this spiral and increasing polarisation with each side saying: "Look what they did." Thus David Koresh was able to say, "Look at how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI are proving that the Book of Revelation is correct. These are the last days, and all these terrible signs prove it." So a whole lot of people that probably would have left, as they had done at the beginning of the siege, did not. They stayed because Koresh was obviously right, because the FBI and the BATF were, from their perspective, behaving to them in such an appalling way. And the BATF and FBI did do some pretty nasty things--both sides did. In Britain, law enforcers are more likely to play it cool. Whereas in America the philosophy seems to be: "If in doubt, do something." Britain's approach is more likely to be: "If in doubt, do nothing." Both positions have their advantages and disadvantages, but it is things like that, the taken-for-granted assumptions or attitudes of a society, which can determine a lot of these outcomes.