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• me too (Score:2, Insightful)

  by jjohn (22) on 2002.08.05 21:16 (#11437) Homepage Journal

  You aren't alone, Randal. This simplistic War on Terrorism has been a unalloyed boon to the dubious Dubya administration, which is milking it for all its worth on both domestic and foreign fronts. Science Fiction stories from the sixties and seventies are full of predictions for a fascist America. We are now uncomfortably close to that fabled point, but not over it. The FDR cliche of "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" is particularly salient these days. It is the irrational fear of random terrorism that now erodes the Constitution. Hopefully, this will era will end better for America than it did for 1940s Germany, 1917 Russia or even 1970s Iran. Only the naive say "it can't happen here."

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  • Re:me too (Score:1)

    by pudge (1)

    The problem is that "terrorist" is a word that describes the intent of an action, but is used to assign value to that action. So we end up saying "they did $X, therefore they are terrorists, and terrorists are bad, therefore they are bad." That's fine if $X has an inherent value, but it usually doesn't. Was The Bomb on Hiroshima a terrorist act? More importantly -- and this is the point -- does it matter? If you call it a terrorist act, does that in itself take away from its justification? No. By say