Tackling a root cause of terrorism

Washington Times ^ | Tuesday, December 21, 2004 | By Bruce Fein

[JohnHuang2]

The United States should criminalize a root cause of terrorism: hate speech teaching that indiscriminate murders are morally justified to further a crazed religious, racial, ethnic or political cause. Europe has been more perspicacious than the United States on that score. The splenetic epithets heard in many madrassas or mosques or taught in many Islamic textbooks are exemplary of the evil. The grisly carnage and generations of conflict born of such appeals to madness justifies the prohibition. Freedom of speech does not include expression that hopes to provoke violence in order to destroy democracy, the rule of law or human rights. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson warned in Terminiello vs. Chicago (1949), the Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact.
    The Intelligence Reform Act initialed last week by President Bush featured commendable anti-terrorism provisions. Terrorist offenses were added to the category of crimes carrying a presumption of no bail. The definition of "material support" for a terrorist organization was clarified and expanded. So-called lone-wolf terrorist suspects were made subject to foreign intelligence surveillance warrants. Receipt of military-type training at a terrorist camp was made a federal crime. But attacking terrorism closer to the source was neglected.
    It is born of psychologically warped minds. As John Locke observed, the mind begins like a blank slate. There is no predisposition towards terrorism. But neither is mankind born with natural virtue. Moral acuity and decency must be cultivated to prevent civilization from degenerating into anarchy and a war of all against all. As Hamlet observed, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
    The causes of human behavior are too complex to know with absolute certainty the constellation of motivations and circumstances that culminate in terrorism.

[CHARLITE]

Wonderful piece by Bruce Fein. One question, however. I think that the quote, "nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so" comes from A.E. Hausman's "The Shropshire Lad," and not from Shakespeare's Hamlet.........unless Hausman was quoting Shakespeare in Shropshire Lad, but I don't think so.