I agree, Fay. It is very hard for me to believe at the complete disreguard for the law these days. Actions should have consequences, but so far....pople do and say as they please. And that is not freedom. It is chaos.
Eamon de Valera was a terrorist, as was Michael Collins, Gerry Adams. Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. Robert Mugabe was a terrorist, Francisco Franco, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Pablo Escobar was a terrorist who was once the most powerful man in Colombia, including the president.
Terrorism is the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims, and sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it fails. Terrorism is not the use of violence to attain DOMINANCE, however. That is OPPRESSION. Many terrorists seek to overturn policies that actually restrict freedom, hence the trite saying "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter". Terrorists are often called "Nazis", which cannot be: Nazis don't seek freedom; they seek dominance and are therefore oppressors, not terrorists.
The big problem in the US is not terrorism, it's the fact that nobody there can agree what FREEDOM is.
I get your point, but I disagree on some of your examples. How can Nelson Mandela be considered a terrorist when he never in his life hurt or killed anyone. To me Nelson Mandela was more akin to Mahatma Ghandi, they were Protestors. They protested loudly and clearly against dishonest, unfair, and painful regimes.
The three Irishmen you refer to deValera, Collins and Adams I recognize by name, I read that Sinn Fein, wanted equality for the Irish Catholics with the Protestant Irish. There was much blood from both the Irish rebels and the English troops. But the problems there go back centuries, there was constant and continual warfare between the Irish and English from the 11th Century on and I will not take sides.
Francisco Franco was a terrorist, he wanted to be dictator and ousted a dictatorial monarch. Neither Franco and his fascists, nor the monarchists gave a damn about the Spanish people.
The terrorists to whom I refer in the United States and the Middle East have only one desire - to kill all those they dislike for any or no reason. With our homegrown terrorists they want to murder anyone who isn't white and male. With the Middle East they want to kill Jews. Neither of the terrorist types cares anything for other people including those citizens who help support them. Sorry, Vincent, my definition of terrorism does not align with yours. However I do respect your right to your own definition.
Mandela: "Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant uMkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign against the government. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and, following the Rivonia Trial, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state." A simple voyage to Wikipedia drags this up.
You convolute my examples to somehow disprove the final conclusion. If terrorist is going to mean anything, it has to mean it absent political leaning. Anyone who backs the establishment is going to label those who fight against it as terrorists.
So that those who might one day seek to overthrow regimes in N. Korea, Russia, China, dare I say Slovakia, Hungary and other corners of the world where "civilization" forms a poor description in some people's views, will likewise be identified by those regimes, if by no one else, as terrorists. When a word gets that tired, people stop listening and it's time to pension it off.
Ok, I see what you mean. Our home grown terrorists do not have any political purpose with which I agree. All they want to do is kill people they disagree with or disapprove of, that's why I consider them to be terrorists. I was aware that Mandela was arrested and spent many, many years in prison for destroying property. I don't think property destruction is an act of terrorism, which is why, while I found the eco terrorists to be stupid spoiled brats, I didn't really find them being true terrorists. People fighting for a just political cause I don't consider terrorists, like the Ukrainians fighting to preserve their Country and lives would not be terrorists. If you want me to refer to Oath Keepers, Proud Boys by some other derogatory name I'm fine with that. I do not see these white supremacists as having any valid political goals. They supported trump because they thought he was a white supremacist like them. Easy, he has no political agenda anyway, obvious from when he was President. His only agenda is to get all the adulation and attention for himself.
Fay, I'm not gonna argue the toss with you. I'm not sure where you would cut off from using terrorism to describe an act against the government. The bombing of the Kerch bridge (on the first attempt, no one was injured) was deemed an act of terrorism by the Russian Federation. Because that's what that word does, it gets backs up. But, although it cost Russia a lot of money to repair their bridge, we don't like their incursion into Ukraine, so we like that kind of terrorism. We like people who strike back at Myanmar, and we like Mr Mandela, and Mr Gandhi. And Collins and de Valera are hailed as heroes, as was Simon Bolivar.
But terrorism isn't just setting off a bomb. When you read the testimony of McVeigh after Oklahoma, there is one exchange that caused me at least to stop in my tracks: "Were you aware there were children in a crèche in the building?" "What were you doing putting children in there?" I paraphrase - Wikipedia will give you the actual words. A Federal building is secured to the gunwales with armed guards and security passes and secret codes and everything because it needs protection from terrorists. So, what do they put on the ground floor of the building? A crèche with toddlers and babies.
There are two views of that, and I'll not say which I favour. One is that the children were protected to the greatest extent feasible. Except: someone set off a bomb that killed them. The other is that they could have been put in a crèche down the street, and no one really bombs crèches, not if they want to strike at the heart of government. The kids would've been safer down the road than actually at the front line of McVeigh's perceived fight against the state that governed him.
In short, McVeigh was a terrorist if you don't favour his view of the Federal US government as a "threat to its own population". That's not a ridiculous posit: the second amendment is precisely there because of that kind of sentiment - so people can protect themselves against their federal government, just as their federal government had in turn protected itself from the British Empire. But if you see the Federal authorities as an oppressor of the people (which they are to some degree in any democratic state), then you will not label McVeigh as a terrorist but as a freedom fighter.
We define terrorists always as "them", but how do states of affairs come about against which terrorists revolt? Do they always just imagine them?
"…the second amendment is precisely there because of that kind of sentiment - so people can protect themselves against their federal government, just as their federal government had in turn protected itself from the British Empire."
Graham,
This interpretation has become a truism among Second Amendment absolutists, but consider its actual text:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Antonin Scalia, the self-styled "literalist" ignored the first half of the Amendment in which the Constitutional founders set its context. In addition, the expression, "bear arms" at the time had a strictly military implication: it did not mean home protection or hunting. That military meaning, as implied in the first half of the Amendment, was to defend the state, not to violently overthrow it. "Overthrowing" it would be a political process for which the Constitution provides non-criminal means. Scalia, in this instance was, if you'll excuse the expression, either "bat-shit crazy" or politically mendacious.
This reflection aside, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the interplay between you and Fay Reid.
No less than I am enjoying the interplay with you, Don.
One doesn't like to turn a comment into an article in its own right. So I kept (er, tried to keep) it short. "People against federal government" - a militia is people and it is what it is, but the amendment was inspired by a fear on the part of the nascent states that a federal authority might be as nasty to them as Britain had been to its colonists, or that's what my understanding is, based on Congress's own website (I'm sure you'll be familiar, but for the others: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt2-2/ALDE_00013262/).
That's beside the point but, then again, it IS the point. The difference is that McVeigh was not a militia, but the sentiments he harboured against the State can be equated to those that inspired the 2nd Amdt: the balance of power between State and states. Whatever; he's, thank goodness, history.
Fay has in the past published what she refers to as "rants" and I don't think that's inaccurate as a description, and it can be applied to what I write as well. We get fired up and set forth with the keyboard to vent our outrage. That's pretty much what a rant is, and two rants don't necessarily make a wrong. Rants are a valve outlet, by which we can let off steam. Rants are good. I even described a rant I recently had in this article: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/a-time-of-waste.
However, no matter how good or bad one feels after ranting, the fact remains that, regardless of how balanced one believes one has been, there do creep in imbalances in the cut and thrust of the arguments. It's good to get feedback on a rant, because that helps relativise things.
Here's an excerpt I've cribbed from the New Yorker by author Salman Rushdie about how a simple concept, many simple concepts, can end up being understood completely wrongly, and yet we endorse each one of them from the outset as worthy and virtuous. He posits telling a tale:
"I imagine it taking place in a small country town—at the village fair, maybe. There are the usual competitions, for the best pies and cakes, the best watermelons; for guessing the weight of a farmer’s pig. A peddler in a threadbare frock coat arrives in a horse-drawn wagon, and says that if he is allowed to judge the contests he will hand out the best rewards anyone has ever seen. “Best prizes!” he cries. “Roll up! Roll up!” And so they do roll up, the simple country folk, and the peddler hands out small bottles to the various prize-winners, bottles labelled Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Goodness, and Peace. The villagers are disappointed. They would have preferred cash. And, in the year following the fair, there are strange occurrences. After drinking the liquid in his bottle, the winner of the Truth prize begins to annoy and alienate his fellow villagers by telling them exactly what he thinks of them. The Beauty, after drinking her award, becomes more beautiful, at least in her own eyes, but also insufferably vain. Freedom’s licentious behavior shocks many of her fellow villagers, who conclude that her bottle must have contained some powerful intoxicant. Goodness declares himself to be a saint, and of course everyone finds him unbearable. And Peace just sits under a tree and smiles. As the village is so full of troubles, this smile is extremely irritating, too.
"A year later, when the fair is held again, the peddler returns but is driven out of town. “Go away,” the villagers cry. “We don’t want those sorts of prizes. A rosette, a cheese, a piece of ham, or a red ribbon with a shiny medal hanging from it. Those are normal prizes. We want those instead.”"
“But if you see the Federal authorities as an oppressor of the people (which they are to some degree in any democratic state), then you will not label McVeigh as a terrorist but as a freedom fighter.” Give me a break. Fighting for the freedom to blow people up? Freedom fighter? The “authorities” in any collection of humans are there to govern the primal impulses of other humans. How a society organizes itself is determined by whether you are attracted to power (authoritarianism) or to something more closely resembling equal rights (theoretical democracy). I don’t want to head down the road of sophistry, and I’m bailing out on this discussion: the Tim McVeigh freedom fighter argument is obscene.
Well, I'll give you your break. Now give me mine: I said I would not say on which side of the argument I come down. Because that's unimportant. What's important is that some arrogate right to their side in all that they think and do. They're not prepared to see anything from another's viewpoint. They're right, all others are wrong. They cannot see that that is exactly the viewpoint of their opponents. As long as they will not even consider a contrary argument, the other side can only either acquiesce in their arrogance or take violent means to quell it.
I agree, Fay. It is very hard for me to believe at the complete disreguard for the law these days. Actions should have consequences, but so far....pople do and say as they please. And that is not freedom. It is chaos.
Eamon de Valera was a terrorist, as was Michael Collins, Gerry Adams. Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. Robert Mugabe was a terrorist, Francisco Franco, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Pablo Escobar was a terrorist who was once the most powerful man in Colombia, including the president.
Terrorism is the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims, and sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it fails. Terrorism is not the use of violence to attain DOMINANCE, however. That is OPPRESSION. Many terrorists seek to overturn policies that actually restrict freedom, hence the trite saying "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter". Terrorists are often called "Nazis", which cannot be: Nazis don't seek freedom; they seek dominance and are therefore oppressors, not terrorists.
The big problem in the US is not terrorism, it's the fact that nobody there can agree what FREEDOM is.
I get your point, but I disagree on some of your examples. How can Nelson Mandela be considered a terrorist when he never in his life hurt or killed anyone. To me Nelson Mandela was more akin to Mahatma Ghandi, they were Protestors. They protested loudly and clearly against dishonest, unfair, and painful regimes.
The three Irishmen you refer to deValera, Collins and Adams I recognize by name, I read that Sinn Fein, wanted equality for the Irish Catholics with the Protestant Irish. There was much blood from both the Irish rebels and the English troops. But the problems there go back centuries, there was constant and continual warfare between the Irish and English from the 11th Century on and I will not take sides.
Francisco Franco was a terrorist, he wanted to be dictator and ousted a dictatorial monarch. Neither Franco and his fascists, nor the monarchists gave a damn about the Spanish people.
The terrorists to whom I refer in the United States and the Middle East have only one desire - to kill all those they dislike for any or no reason. With our homegrown terrorists they want to murder anyone who isn't white and male. With the Middle East they want to kill Jews. Neither of the terrorist types cares anything for other people including those citizens who help support them. Sorry, Vincent, my definition of terrorism does not align with yours. However I do respect your right to your own definition.
Mandela: "Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant uMkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign against the government. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and, following the Rivonia Trial, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state." A simple voyage to Wikipedia drags this up.
You convolute my examples to somehow disprove the final conclusion. If terrorist is going to mean anything, it has to mean it absent political leaning. Anyone who backs the establishment is going to label those who fight against it as terrorists.
So that those who might one day seek to overthrow regimes in N. Korea, Russia, China, dare I say Slovakia, Hungary and other corners of the world where "civilization" forms a poor description in some people's views, will likewise be identified by those regimes, if by no one else, as terrorists. When a word gets that tired, people stop listening and it's time to pension it off.
Ok, I see what you mean. Our home grown terrorists do not have any political purpose with which I agree. All they want to do is kill people they disagree with or disapprove of, that's why I consider them to be terrorists. I was aware that Mandela was arrested and spent many, many years in prison for destroying property. I don't think property destruction is an act of terrorism, which is why, while I found the eco terrorists to be stupid spoiled brats, I didn't really find them being true terrorists. People fighting for a just political cause I don't consider terrorists, like the Ukrainians fighting to preserve their Country and lives would not be terrorists. If you want me to refer to Oath Keepers, Proud Boys by some other derogatory name I'm fine with that. I do not see these white supremacists as having any valid political goals. They supported trump because they thought he was a white supremacist like them. Easy, he has no political agenda anyway, obvious from when he was President. His only agenda is to get all the adulation and attention for himself.
Fay, I'm not gonna argue the toss with you. I'm not sure where you would cut off from using terrorism to describe an act against the government. The bombing of the Kerch bridge (on the first attempt, no one was injured) was deemed an act of terrorism by the Russian Federation. Because that's what that word does, it gets backs up. But, although it cost Russia a lot of money to repair their bridge, we don't like their incursion into Ukraine, so we like that kind of terrorism. We like people who strike back at Myanmar, and we like Mr Mandela, and Mr Gandhi. And Collins and de Valera are hailed as heroes, as was Simon Bolivar.
But terrorism isn't just setting off a bomb. When you read the testimony of McVeigh after Oklahoma, there is one exchange that caused me at least to stop in my tracks: "Were you aware there were children in a crèche in the building?" "What were you doing putting children in there?" I paraphrase - Wikipedia will give you the actual words. A Federal building is secured to the gunwales with armed guards and security passes and secret codes and everything because it needs protection from terrorists. So, what do they put on the ground floor of the building? A crèche with toddlers and babies.
There are two views of that, and I'll not say which I favour. One is that the children were protected to the greatest extent feasible. Except: someone set off a bomb that killed them. The other is that they could have been put in a crèche down the street, and no one really bombs crèches, not if they want to strike at the heart of government. The kids would've been safer down the road than actually at the front line of McVeigh's perceived fight against the state that governed him.
In short, McVeigh was a terrorist if you don't favour his view of the Federal US government as a "threat to its own population". That's not a ridiculous posit: the second amendment is precisely there because of that kind of sentiment - so people can protect themselves against their federal government, just as their federal government had in turn protected itself from the British Empire. But if you see the Federal authorities as an oppressor of the people (which they are to some degree in any democratic state), then you will not label McVeigh as a terrorist but as a freedom fighter.
We define terrorists always as "them", but how do states of affairs come about against which terrorists revolt? Do they always just imagine them?
"…the second amendment is precisely there because of that kind of sentiment - so people can protect themselves against their federal government, just as their federal government had in turn protected itself from the British Empire."
Graham,
This interpretation has become a truism among Second Amendment absolutists, but consider its actual text:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Antonin Scalia, the self-styled "literalist" ignored the first half of the Amendment in which the Constitutional founders set its context. In addition, the expression, "bear arms" at the time had a strictly military implication: it did not mean home protection or hunting. That military meaning, as implied in the first half of the Amendment, was to defend the state, not to violently overthrow it. "Overthrowing" it would be a political process for which the Constitution provides non-criminal means. Scalia, in this instance was, if you'll excuse the expression, either "bat-shit crazy" or politically mendacious.
This reflection aside, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the interplay between you and Fay Reid.
No less than I am enjoying the interplay with you, Don.
One doesn't like to turn a comment into an article in its own right. So I kept (er, tried to keep) it short. "People against federal government" - a militia is people and it is what it is, but the amendment was inspired by a fear on the part of the nascent states that a federal authority might be as nasty to them as Britain had been to its colonists, or that's what my understanding is, based on Congress's own website (I'm sure you'll be familiar, but for the others: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt2-2/ALDE_00013262/).
That's beside the point but, then again, it IS the point. The difference is that McVeigh was not a militia, but the sentiments he harboured against the State can be equated to those that inspired the 2nd Amdt: the balance of power between State and states. Whatever; he's, thank goodness, history.
Fay has in the past published what she refers to as "rants" and I don't think that's inaccurate as a description, and it can be applied to what I write as well. We get fired up and set forth with the keyboard to vent our outrage. That's pretty much what a rant is, and two rants don't necessarily make a wrong. Rants are a valve outlet, by which we can let off steam. Rants are good. I even described a rant I recently had in this article: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/a-time-of-waste.
However, no matter how good or bad one feels after ranting, the fact remains that, regardless of how balanced one believes one has been, there do creep in imbalances in the cut and thrust of the arguments. It's good to get feedback on a rant, because that helps relativise things.
Here's an excerpt I've cribbed from the New Yorker by author Salman Rushdie about how a simple concept, many simple concepts, can end up being understood completely wrongly, and yet we endorse each one of them from the outset as worthy and virtuous. He posits telling a tale:
"I imagine it taking place in a small country town—at the village fair, maybe. There are the usual competitions, for the best pies and cakes, the best watermelons; for guessing the weight of a farmer’s pig. A peddler in a threadbare frock coat arrives in a horse-drawn wagon, and says that if he is allowed to judge the contests he will hand out the best rewards anyone has ever seen. “Best prizes!” he cries. “Roll up! Roll up!” And so they do roll up, the simple country folk, and the peddler hands out small bottles to the various prize-winners, bottles labelled Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Goodness, and Peace. The villagers are disappointed. They would have preferred cash. And, in the year following the fair, there are strange occurrences. After drinking the liquid in his bottle, the winner of the Truth prize begins to annoy and alienate his fellow villagers by telling them exactly what he thinks of them. The Beauty, after drinking her award, becomes more beautiful, at least in her own eyes, but also insufferably vain. Freedom’s licentious behavior shocks many of her fellow villagers, who conclude that her bottle must have contained some powerful intoxicant. Goodness declares himself to be a saint, and of course everyone finds him unbearable. And Peace just sits under a tree and smiles. As the village is so full of troubles, this smile is extremely irritating, too.
"A year later, when the fair is held again, the peddler returns but is driven out of town. “Go away,” the villagers cry. “We don’t want those sorts of prizes. A rosette, a cheese, a piece of ham, or a red ribbon with a shiny medal hanging from it. Those are normal prizes. We want those instead.”"
Thank you for your valued input, Don.
“But if you see the Federal authorities as an oppressor of the people (which they are to some degree in any democratic state), then you will not label McVeigh as a terrorist but as a freedom fighter.” Give me a break. Fighting for the freedom to blow people up? Freedom fighter? The “authorities” in any collection of humans are there to govern the primal impulses of other humans. How a society organizes itself is determined by whether you are attracted to power (authoritarianism) or to something more closely resembling equal rights (theoretical democracy). I don’t want to head down the road of sophistry, and I’m bailing out on this discussion: the Tim McVeigh freedom fighter argument is obscene.
Well, I'll give you your break. Now give me mine: I said I would not say on which side of the argument I come down. Because that's unimportant. What's important is that some arrogate right to their side in all that they think and do. They're not prepared to see anything from another's viewpoint. They're right, all others are wrong. They cannot see that that is exactly the viewpoint of their opponents. As long as they will not even consider a contrary argument, the other side can only either acquiesce in their arrogance or take violent means to quell it.
For your reading or listening pleasure: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/choosing-our-words-carefully
Thank you, I will read it
One man's terrorist may be another man's freedom fighter.
Donald Trump is polling well.