Normally open July 4th only---the one day a year when partisan politics, religion, etc. are acceptable topics on this Board. (The 2012 window is now closed; thanks for playing.)
Here's a good article on how the word terrorism has become meaningless in the American lexicon.
There's a great paradox in the American political landscape: the word that is used most frequently to justify everything from invasions and bombings to torture, indefinite detention, and the sprawling Surveillance State -- Terrorism -- is also the most ill-defined and manipulated word. It has no fixed meaning, and thus applies to virtually anything the user wishes to demonize, while excluding the user's own behavior and other acts one seeks to justify. All of this would be an interesting though largely academic, semantic matter if not for the central political significance with which this term is vested: both formally (in our law) and informally (in our political debates and rhetoric). . . .
The reason no clear definition of Terrorism is ever settled upon is because it's virtually impossible to embrace a definition without either (a) excluding behavior one wishes to demonize and thus include and/or (b) including behavior (including one's own and those of one's friends) which one desperately wants to exclude.
jazzcyclist wrote:Here's one final question in the twilight hours of Free Speech Weekend 2011. Do you consider Nat Turner to be a terrorist?
At the time, yes. Was Gerry Adams a terrorist?
Absolutely! But both Turner and Adams were justified in their actions IMO. Here's the thing. If a nation, a sub-national group or a lone individual have a legitimate grievance for which non-violent tactics have proven ineffectual, and they do not possess war-making capability, the only option left to them is terrorism. Don't ever overestimate the power of nonviolent protest. If Ghandi had faced Hitler, he would have been just another dead Indian.
BillVol wrote:Ask Nelson Mandela if he believes in terrorism.
He certainly didn't spend 27 years in prison for sitting in at lunch counters. As a matter of fact, when the finally caught him, he was plotting to blow up a passeneger train.
There's a great paradox in the American political landscape: the word that is used most frequently to justify everything from invasions and bombings to torture, indefinite detention, and the sprawling Surveillance State -- Terrorism -- is also the most ill-defined and manipulated word. It has no fixed meaning, and thus applies to virtually anything the user wishes to demonize, while excluding the user's own behavior and other acts one seeks to justify. All of this would be an interesting though largely academic, semantic matter if not for the central political significance with which this term is vested: both formally (in our law) and informally (in our political debates and rhetoric). . . .
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I said in this thread a very short while ago.
And once a word has lost its way, it ceases to serve ANY function in debate - rendering this entire thread . . . moot*.
* second denotation = of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic.
