Re: The Net and Terrorism

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

Not knowing enough of the posting of John Deters, I can't tell where he is
being facetious, where I agree with him, and where I really disagree with
him.

So, take my comments as responding directly to what I perceive his points
to actually be:

At 12:52 AM 7/3/96, John Deters wrote:

>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.

As I see it, the more "educated" a subgroup becomes, in terms of
"education" about "the dominant political power structure," the more they
see the world in dark terms, and resent it.

The more "educated" an ethnic subgroup is about "racism" is, the more
racist they themselves are. (I learned this in 1970 when I went away to
college in California and found an entire racial/ethnic subgroup totally
consumed by fears of persecution and racism, so much so that they could
only study their own persecution and so screwed themselves out of any
reasonable chance of succeeding in the American culture.)

By the way, the accepted name for this is: "victimology."

>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.

I certainly agree with this. Many people and subgroups are losing sight of
this basic point. (Of course, their confusion is partially explained by the
fact that they have grown up believing that government schools are
responsible for instilling proper ethical values.)


>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".

And those who think the government school system _is_ responsible for
teaching moral and ethical values should ponder the issue of just what
moral and ethical values were taught by the official schools of Alabama and
Mississippi in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Duh. When you dance with the
Devil, you dance to his tune.

>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

I'm 44 and I see just the opposite. Today's kids spout platitudes about
"Why can't we all just get along?" without any clues about what they mean.
99% of kids interviewed cite "racism" as the world's Number One problem,
showing their education to be a complet failure.

--Tim May

P.S. I planned to stop here, in the interests of brevity, but:

>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.

Well, on these points I agree. Non-U.S. countries often cluck about
America's well-publicized race problems, but we are far more integrated and
mixed than are most countries (and I lived for a year in Europe and have
visited a few times since).

>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.

One of my "meta-points" is to try to move the discussion beyond comments
about "hatred and prejudice," which I find to be code words for meaningless
chatter which misses the real issues. (No offense to John Deters is
intended.)

>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?

Thanks for the comments, John. My main point was that we should not give up
basic American (and "western") values for the sake of reducing terrorism.
(Ironically, one of the basic notions of terrorism of certain sorts is that
the very acts of terrorism will bring on some state which will further the
causes of the terrorists...the Hegelian triatica and all that revolutionary
stuff, etc.)

The terrorists should not be given a victory of sorts by implementing
martial law to reduce further attacks.

--Tim, again

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