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My father was always adamant that we--the progeny of Breens, Harmons, Odells and Ryans--NEVER identify ourselves as "Irish Catholics" given his utter contempt for the terrorist IRA.

Discussing it one time when I was in grade school, I remember his observing that it had been a mistake for Britain to capitulate to the Zionist terrorists since it only encouraged the IRA (and others) to believe terrorism could actually be a successful tack for extortion.

All of that went over my head, of course. I certainly never made the connection between the "Zionist Terrorists" of which my Dad spoke and the state of Israel ... hell, I was aching to convert to Judaism after I saw "Raid on Entebbe." Very pro-Israel upbringing.

I think terrorism can be an immensely successful tack, actually. Not the sort perpetuated by brainwashed desperate Palestinians conditioned to the inhuman and irrational act of suicide (which actually speaks volumes about the sort of brainwashing they've received). But the sort that has traditionally been deployed by those who repeated over and over and over that: The Revolution makes no sense without terror.

I think all too often folks who believe the French Revolution was some hallmark of "liberty, equality and fraternity" rather than the terrorist bloodbath and ritual slaughter of all natural and reasonable authority (particularly that of the Church) are inclined to overlook the very real elegance of terror as used by its most consistent practitioners in the Art of bringing Order out of the sort of Chaos that terror -- above all -- invokes immediately in a then fearful, thoroughly shocked and often rightfully angry populace.

I'm pretty confident that those who bankrolled Lenin and sent him back to Russia were well aware of the fact they were funding a terrorist, tried and true.

Not much changes, really. Those who think the world "changed" on 9/11 must just be ignorant, I guess, of the fact terror -- particularly that practiced by French radicals and their progeny the Narodnya Volya -- has always been a force to be reckoned with but had reached a certain perfection as adopted by the (ongoing) Revolution.