Eco-criminals at work to hurt honest science

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If suspicions are true, the devastating fire at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture is the work of rank criminals.

Arson is never protected by a veneer of righteousness or endowed with a higher purpose because the perpetrator with a match believes the world ought to work in a particular fashion.

Professing to save the environment by starting fires in the middle of the night is the act of a coward, not someone with authentic convictions.

Eco-terrorism has no more cachet than snipers shooting at doctors who perform abortions, or bigots who smear swastikas on synagogue doors.

Torching a horticulture laboratory? Imagine the planning: evading the coleus, overpowering the grape holly. One appeal of such criminality is the mindless notion no one will get hurt. No thought is given to trapping a janitor or catching a dozing grad student in the flames.

Years of work and research were destroyed by thugs with only the most vacuous sense of mission and outcome. Instead, there is only overwhelming arrogance; the willingness to forcibly impose a vision of how things should be on the rest of us.

True revolutionaries hang around to argue their point and go to jail if need be. Civil disobedience is a powerful force for change.

Flames in the middle of the night? That's the work of neo-Nazis, Klansmen and, apparently, eco-terrorists. That's quite a gene pool.