At 03:44 PM 6/30/96 -0700, you wrote:
in reality. it seems to me no nation-state has ever experimented with trying to take away the root causes of violence and discontent.
But here in the U.S., we ARE trying to take them away via the educational system. About the only thing we can effectively do is to provide more educational opportunities that denounce violence, racism, hate crimes, etc. However, you cannot eliminate discontent without eliminating greed; which is simply not possible. Even so, there are a couple of problems with even attempting "to take away the root causes", not the least of which is the Constitutionally protected right to free speech. I am allowed to teach my kid to hate anyone for any reason. I can blame this or that group for this set of troubles, and that the best way to deal with this is not only to scare them away, but to kill as many of them as possible. It may be morally repugnant, but it is protected speech. The countries that sponsor terrorists have not been noted for their successful educational systems. And they certainly are not going to listen to Western discussions on how best to solve their "problems". Do you still not accept that we have a world that contains people who exist in conditions that foster and breed terrorists? If not, look at some more concrete examples. Have you ever met an Islamic fundamentalist? How about a Christian fundamentalist? There really is no difference between them, other than the specific quotations that exit their pre-programmed mouths. When religion enteres the picture, no amount of logic will convince the true believers that they are acting destructively. Even moderately regligious Christians (the people to whom I have been most exposed) have very strong beliefs that X is the word of God, and therefore not subject to question. When this is some destructive (yet not obvious as such) statement, such as "Go forth and multiply", no amount of education or logic will convince them that Zero Population Growth is a good thing. I'm sure you can multiply this into all sorts of destructive behavior preached locally, such as the Southern Baptist preachers who refuse to denounce the maltreatment of blacks or the burning of black churches. There is no force of law that can alter this behavior. My point here is that this behavior is explicitly protected by the Bill of Rights. So, do you not accept that we have the environment right here that can breed violence and discontent? For the most part, I see kids today being educated with much less "hatred" than even my age group was brought up with (I'm 34). We're moving in the right direction by incorporating diversity in education, entertainment and the workplace, but we can never hope to erase it all. And if even one person retains the seed of violence, they can employ the "warfare of the weak" -- terrorism.
or that they are worth the money. terrorists invariably have a patricular pathological psychological profile that sees the world in terms of "martyrs vs. villians" with the villians in the government, and the villians taking away or abusing respectable citizens.
So your point here is one of *agreement* that human nature will produce psychological profiles of people who commit acts of terror.
the "problem" of terrorism will be solved when we take the view that insanity and violence is *not* a natural aspect of human behavior (as TCM tends to suggest),
Even in spite of your argument above? Violence is here. It's been present since recorded history. We've gotten pretty good at it, actually. I think the record speaks pretty clearly that violence continues to be a part of human behavior, despite any efforts made to stop it.
and that there are specific environmental conditions that breed it. like malaria, if you take away the swamplike breeding grounds, you will largely remove it. such a thing is a radical hypothesis, but one that nonetheless has never really been tested in practice.
As I said above, we can reduce some of the breeding grounds, but we can not eradicate them all. And if one were to conduct a study correlating racist attitudes with education with numbers of acts of terror, we might find a direct correlation. The U.S. has a level of tolerance for diversity that I only recently came to appreciate. We hosted a foreign exchange student from Scotland (hardly culture shock to him), but he surprised me when he commented on how surprised he was that different groups of people were mixed together -- black kids hanging out with white kids, catholics and protestants being friends, the sort of thing that I take for granted every day. He expected the subtle racism of home. And lets just say that Great Britain's culture is probably closer to ours than any other country. I am more than willing to agree with you that elimination of hatred and prejudice will go farther than any law enforcement measures to reduce terrorist acts. However, my point, and I believe this is Tim's point, too, is that it will *never* eliminate these acts, and that there must be other ways of dealing with the problems that occur.
I'm not advocating such "terrorism," by the way, merely telling it like it is. ah yes, the standard amusing TCM disclaimer. hmmm, your signature suggests otherwise.
This personal attack was completely unwarranted. Are you suggesting that Tim is a sponsor of terrorist attacks, or that he approves of the repeatedly demonstrated governmental penchant for violating our privacy whenever convenient? There was no point to making this statement, other than to foster discontent.
(Remember, terrorism is just warfare carried on by other means, with apolgies to Von Clausewitz.) disagree. the purpose of warfare has traditionally been to seize
I completely disagree with you here. Terror has all the same purposes as general-purpose warfare: it's simply being carried out by a smaller group, without the resources available to an entire government. Look at the Irish Question: they want independance from a government they deem undesirable. Look at the arabian terrorist bombings of Americans in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, etc.: they want to drive the U.S. Army out. Likewise, the bombing of the Murrah building in OK was a "military" target: it housed the agencies that some small group percieved to be responsible for the attack on Waco. Even the church building burnings happening across the southern U.S. appear to have a specific objective: to frighten the victims; and if the victims left the area, the terrorists would have accomplished their objectives. No hidden purposes here: these are all military actions being carried out by groups that are simply not in a position to negotiate. It is "warfare by the weak". You may think that you hold every answer to terrorism in your hand, that hugs and kisses before bedtime will make the evil monsters under the bed go away. The point of Tim's essay was that, yes, the net can be used by the evil monsters, and yes, the evil monsters are here, and no, the evil monsters are not going away any time soon. Why did you feel it necessary to try to slam his fairly well-researched and quite obvious conclusion? John -- J. Deters
From Senator C. Burns' Pro-CODE bill, which I support and you can find at: http://www.senate.gov/member/mt/burns/general/billtext.htm " (2) Miniaturization, disturbed computing, and reduced transmission costs make communication via electronic networks a reality." +---------------------------------------------------------+ | NET: jad@dsddhc.com (work) jad@pclink.com (home) | | PSTN: 1 612 375 3116 (work) 1 612 894 8507 (home) | | ICBM: 44^58'33"N by 93^16'42"W Elev. ~=290m (work) | | PGP Key ID: 768 / 15FFA875 | +---------------------------------------------------------+