🚀 go-pugleaf

Kjell Wooding (kwooding@acs.ucalgary.ca) wrote:
: In article <2n7fjh$rd2@nic.umass.edu>,
: Lulu of the lotus-eaters <quilty@twain.ucs.umass.edu> wrote:
: >Same thing.  Terrorism is whatever fight for freedom the gov't doesn't 
: >like -- by definition.  And since fights for freedom are almost always 
: >for freedom *against* state tyrrany, gov't rarely likes it.  

: Now hang on a sec. "By definition", the government we are
: speaking of is a DEMOCRATIC one. That means, what the public
: wants, the government wants. Stating that "terrorism" of this
: sort is justified because you're fighting state tyrrany indicated either:

: * A minority (the "terrorists") trying to overthroy a majority
: (the government / general public)

: * A real problem in a supposedly "democratic" system.

Actually no. By definition the government is a democratic REPUBLIC.

No pure democracies do or have existed in the world. It is not a minor 
difference. If you check the equivalent of the US bill of rights in most 
democratic republics you will discover that they consist mostly of 
minority right protections. Left to themselves, democratic forms of 
government usually become "tyrannies of the majority" where minority 
factions become disenfranchized. 

A classic example is the imprisoning of tens of thousands of 
Japanese-Americans during World War Two by the US government - for the 
"crime" of: being ethnic Japanese-Americans. German-Americans and 
Italian-Americans were not similarly stigmatized. To my shame one such 
"relocation" camp was here in my home state of Utah. The US government 
involuntarily "relocated" Japanese-Americans to the most remote areas 
they could find. Constitution be damned.

The natural consequence of disenfranchizement is guerrilla warfare by the 
disenfranchized (which is not necessarily terrorism, although 
governments like to claim so).

The civil rights protests in the US of the 1960's by blacks were a 
perfect example of such guerrilla warfare by a disenfranchized minority.
As were the Indian wars, a century earlier.

You will get no disagreement from me that our government is a very 
ill democratic system. It has never been exceptionally healthy, and a 
democracy (pure or not) is an inherently unstable form of government.
People have a nasty habit of voting away the very rights that allow them 
to vote in the first place, in the name of security (economic, social or 
military).

--
Benjamin Franz

"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the 
Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give 
to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from 
responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."

                                 Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)