Posted on 07/11/2005 2:07:03 PM PDT by ratemy
It is very dismaying, but not beyond grasp, why some folks do not understand the viciousness of terrorism. The bottom line is always the same: tribalism. It is also called collectivism — socialist, fascist, communitarian, or any other type of irrational lumping of human beings into groups they have never chosen to join.
Any time a terrorist attack occurs, a great many people wring their hands trying to figure out just what is amiss with such barbaric conduct. Be it an IRA, Palestinian, or radical Muslim (suicide) attack, there is the usual acknowledgement that terrorism is horrible and the people doing it are over the top, but then the focus turns to whatever is supposed to have provoked it — usually George W. Bush and his predecessors' foreign policy measures. And some of this, of course, isn't beside the point in making sense of certain of these events.
Yet this focus on provocations misses the most basic issue, which is that terrorists lack the most elementary traits of civilization: to treat individuals as individuals — as sovereign, self-directed agents who aren't responsible for the misdeeds of their fellow human beings. If you insult me, hit me, steal from me, or do any other untoward deed toward me, it is utterly unjustified for me to go after your sister, your neighbor, someone who looks like you, someone sitting near you, or someone who lives in the same country as you do. If you have wronged someone, the only recourse that is justified morally (and should be legally and politically), is to put you on trial and convict you of your bad deeds, period. Such due process is the bedrock of a civilized society, and anyone who resorts to 'reprisals' that fail to meet this strict criterion may not be rationally excused.
There is, of course, in our age, the widespread temptation to explain everything people do as if they were bad storms coming off the Atlantic Ocean, or viruses attacking the nervous system. The source of this temptation is the old philosophical doctrine of materialism, the view that everything in nature happens because some prior event caused it to happen.
This is indeed the origin of much of social science and social engineering, but it misses a vital point about human life: People are agents; they do not simply react to what happens to them. So to really explain their conduct, it is not enough to gather up the data of what happens around them. It is imperative, for a decent understanding of how people act, to consider their own thinking and intentions and motives, things over which they have ultimate control.
Once you look at it this way, you have to realize that a terrorist is a vicious, irreponsible thug who refuses to control his own emotions and lashes out, often with much intelligence and savvy, at some target in the fashion of a toddler who is throwing a tantrum. And toddlers are not civilized beings, as any parent knows. Only toddlers can be excused because they are too young to have the capacity to act more rationally — to be civilized. This explanation isn't, however, available to terrorists. They are adults, and they ought to think before they lash out in their violent, reckless ways.
It is true, of course, that some of what terrorists think about is awful, and their anger can even be justified. It is what they do about what they think about — and their emotional reaction to it — that is vile. And no matter how valid some of their complaints are, tearing into the lives of innocent people is morally inexcusable. The way, however, many of them think is to lump other people together, in some sort of irrational corporate fashion, as if all of those in London had consciously, voluntarily joined in with a club with a mission statement forged by, say, Tony Blair — a mission statement that terrorists find objectionable. But this is wrong. Certainly a bunch of kids on a subway cannot by any stretch of the imagination be so regarded. Nor can most citizens of London. Nor those of Israel or New York City. And to fail to realize this is the mark of the barbaric.
Sadly, the people of the world have tended to think in this tribalist fashion for centuries, and even some of the most well educated, erudite blokes do not get it. The imperative for us all is to get it, and to make as sure as possible that everyone around us gets it.
It is individuals who are responsible for their conduct, and striking out at neighbors, friends, and family when one finds the actions of some to be intolerable is a rejection of a basic feature of human civilization.
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Tibor Machan is R. C. Hoiles Professor of Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University in Orange, California. He is also a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and an advisor on public policy matters for Freedom Communications, Inc.
Some never will.
They have their pointy head where the sun doesn't shine.
It's been there all their life and change is HARD to do!
No, I think he missed.
Terrorism is a tool.
The US sponsored
anti-Soviet
insurgents around the globe.
It didn't matter
what the "tribes" believed.
And, globally, their "passions"
were irrelevant.
Insurgents were used
to weaken the Soviet
economy, and
demoralize the
Soviet people. It worked.
Terrorism worked.
The Soviets failed
at fighting all the small wars
we set up for them,
their economy
collapsed, and the "Union" fell.
Terrorism worked.
Now, either the groups
have organized themselves, or
someone's pulling strings
and using this tool
back against the Western World.
And the question is
will the Western World
buckle like the Soviets
financially and
crumble as a bloc?
It took just a few decades
to wear down the Reds . . .
I hope people are listening to your message that terrorism brought down the Soviet empire. We can't afford to play with this fire. It has to be extinguished.
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