That’s a good point. “Libertarianism” is another word for anarchism and has a right and a left wing.

“It appears the FBI, Secret Service and Chicago police want to claim a home-brewing beer kit could have been used to produce ‘Molotov cocktails’”.

If they have a guy that can throw a gasoline-filled carboy, then I think the Feds may have reason to be scared.

As it happens, the South African ruling classes were reasoned with and did come to their senses. The system–without the apartheid–was preserved, at least for the moment. I still hope that the same can happen here. I just don’t think that that is the only possible outcome. The other possibilities are, unfortunately, likely to be much more unpleasant, if historical examples apply. And I, for one, do not have a clear idea of what’s to be done.

The word “terrorism” is used because it is an intentionally vague term that can be used selectively against political enemies.

Terrorism is not a real, concrete crime. Acts of violence (murder, assault, rape) are crimes, as are theft or destruction of property (robbery, arson, vandalism). But frightening people–the core element of terrorism–need not involve violence or property destruction. Fear is a subjective state that may or may not have a basis in reality. People can be and offten are frightened by someone who has no intent to harm them. Frightening people is thus not a crime.

Even deliberate attempts to induce fear of violence are not generally criminal in our world. States generally consider it perfectly legitimate to adopt military tactics whose only purpose is to terrorize enemy combatants. In WW1, the German high command formally adopted policy of Schrecklichkeit (literally “frightfulness”, “terrorism”) to keep the Belgian civil population from engaging in guerilla activity. In Iraq, our own leadership called the tactic Shock and Awe.

So why do we have this hyped up, new-age crime of “terrorism”? We have it because it is useful. It deliberately muddles criminal and non-criminal behavior in a way that allows selective, politically motivated application of legal sanctions to otherwise legal opposition behavior. Branding a protester or letter writer as a “terrorist” along with murderers and arsonists lets you treat him like a murdering arsonist, even though his actions are no different from those of other law-abiding citizens. You can impose the penalties for real crime on things that are not crimes at all. Conversely, when convenient, you can escape the necessity of punishing torture and murder by NOT calling these real crimes “terrorism”. For this reason, the apartheid-era South African and Rhodesian dictatorships, the occupying Nazis, the French colonial regime in North Africa all classed their opponents–peaceful marchers, strikers, lawyers, and armed guerillas–indiscriminately as “terrorists”.

“Terrorism” is now the charge of choice in the US because terrorism laws let the state criminalize all activity–legal or not–that opposes the interests of and thus frightens the powers that be. The acts committed–the Molotov cocktails and dirty bombs, built or not built–are immaterial. What is material is the ideas the accused express. THOSE are what terrories the state.

If there is a bright side to this, it has to be that emergency “terrorism” laws are not the mark of stable, confident, and long-lived powers. They are a sign of imminent crisis. Successful, solid regimes can afford to punish actual assassins and bombers with ordinary, apolitical, murder and arson laws. In fact, by making the terroristic motivations behind violent political acts irrelevant, normal civil prosecution diminishes the perpetrators’ cause and deprives them of their reason for acting. You can’t terrorize a power that isn’t afraid. But a power that is so afraid of any opposition that it needs catch-all “antiterrorism” powers to feel less fearful has, historically speaking, not got much tie left.

I guess we differ in that I think my control over my boundaries and identity ends with me and the grave. My kids, my neighbors, the historians, etc. will always be able to think what they want, no matter what the Mormons–or I–think.

I also don’t really care that much about respect, except for self-respect. The Mormons can think what they want about me and my largely non-Catholic ancestors (some of whom were probably monastery-burning, church-sacking, heavy-drinking heathens). But Mormons can’t change what I think, any more than the Pope can. So, if Mormons want to “save” me and mine, I’ll take that as a good intention on their part, even if I don’t think they can actually pull it off. Bless ‘em for trying, because I can use all the help that I can get.

Awwhhh, come on! I’m a Catholic. I don’t believe any of the Mormon theology. But posthumous conversion remains evidence of a charitable disposition, in my opinion. Naive. Simple-minded even. But essentially benevolent. You might almost say that Mormons are the only religion that allows double-dipping: choose one faith and, if you choose wrong, still get a chance to be saved by another for free!

The relatively few Mormons that I have known well have all been well-meaning and sincere. Over earnest, often. Narrow-minded, fairly often. Overbearing and bigoted occasionally. But I give something like this the benefit of the doubt.

After all, I believe that Mormons are tragically WRONG about the afterlife. Their baptism can’t save them much less affect a dead me in any way. But this is a case where it’s the thought that counts. So I pray for Mormons. And I always ask them to pray for me. I find it’s the best way to send missionaries on their way with no hard feelings in minimum time–and you can never have too much insurance.

Also, it’s a minor point, but as a Mormon acquaintance once explained this to me, if we are human, we are ALL relatives. He was pretty sure his church had already done Adam and Eve. So the rest of us are at most distant cousins.

Excellent post. One thing that you do not mention needs a little emphasis though: Vatican II was not a novelty, if we look at the history of the Church. The novelty is the whole concept of Papal supremacy–it only dates back to 1870 and the Pope’s frantic attempts to prolong Austrian-style absolutism in Italy. For 1800 years, the Pope was, religiously, merely the well-respected final arbiter of doctrinal disputes in Western Christendom. It was only when Italian independence took away the Pope’s petty principality in central Italy that the Piuses, IX through XII (all of whom the current Vatican is fast tracking for sainthood), suddenly invented this claimed imperial power over the consciences of Catholics.

Thirty-two years ago, when the priest that was to marry me started in on the “Holy Father’s” orders re birth-control, I silenced him with a Church maxim that goes back at least to the 12th century: “Vox populi, vox dei est”, “the voice of the people is the voice of God”. He was well-educated and knew he had nothing to say in reply.

The term “conservative” is not a philosophy. Call it what is: a euphemism or a fundamentally anti-American, anti-capitalist, reactionary movement that wants to return us to rule by kings, dukes, and baronets. We should call thus call “conservatives” what they call them in England and used to call them here, when they fought against our Revolution: Tories.

Historically (and, to less circumspect contemporary reactionaries like the current inhabitants of the Vatican), liberalism is simply belief in reason, individual liberty, free enterprise, science, equality, meritocracy, and the perfectibility or, at least, improvability of human institutions through thought and fairness. A Tory is a reactionary who opposes all of these things, because they undercut what really matters to him: hereditary privilege and a status quo that benefits him and those he serves. Tories want to prosper because of who they are, not because of what they do. They dread a world where they might be forced to rely on intelligence and talents they do not have ot on efforts they have no interest in making.

When the term was first used in its more or less modern sense, “Liberal” was applied to revolutionary societies, such as America and–gasp–France, and to segments of other societies that embraced revolutionary ideas, notably segments of 18th- and 19th-century Britain’s intelligentsia and emerging manufacturing classes. The alternative to liberalism, then as now, was reaction: the French ancienne regime, Habsburg Austria, Romanov Russia, and imperial Prussia, plus Britain’s peerage, the segment of society that gave the world fox hunting, Ascot, and a lot of receding chins (breeding matters).

The “philosophical” claims of Toryism/conservatism–whether Burke’s or Ayn Rand’s–are no more than verbal cover for this fundamentally unjust, self-interested position. Such claims can’t hold up in the face of serious critical examination. This is why nothing makes a modern-day American Tory madder than pointing out the historical fact that the privilege he defends was accumulated by “gubment” functionaries (kings, dukes, etc.) who misappropriated or outright stole (by force) the work and property of the wider, working community that the governors were supposed to serve (for just one example, look up the “enclosure” movement on Wikipedia or in any reputable history of medieval and modern Europe).