Libertarianism and Terrorism
By Kamala Sarup
We had always viewed "terrorism" through the viewpoint of the Cold War because that is when we grew up. The phenomenon
is known as "mirroring" or seeing things within the limitations of one's upbringing, beliefs and experiences.
While mourning the loss of the all the great warriors, the now dead and scattered of al Qa'ida, we began to see that the
New Face of Terrorism. From what we were able to glean, the New Face of Terrorism is quite a bit more scary than the old
one. The new terrorists, particularly those of HuT, believe in..."Nothing"! This makes them a bit more difficult to
categorize or track".
It seems, if these many shades are to be believed, that the new terrorist believes in alone. In this, they are alike to
the murdered that matured in the 1990s.
Thus, to these new terrorists, a terrorism "event" is simply an opportunity to make money, by market manipulation and
timely buying and selling. This literally turned our face ashen and made our toes quiver. Nothing can be more terrifying
than amoral untrammeled Greed". An American writer John Schrab said recently.
"To the world at large, a terrorism event is nothing more than an unscheduled "event". Something their Masters did not
put into the television guides or popular press. "Oh look, this was not on the schedule!" they cry. Others simply nod
and say "blood move". Then there are those of us amateur sleuths who try and determine "Why?".
It is ultimately a futile and vain endeavor, for the answer lies in the blackened hearts of men and women everywhere who
care only for their money and not for other human beings and the welfare of the planet. And that is not likely to change
anytime soon. He argued.
It was a tragic murdered to Nepali police recently by Maoists. Many people in Nepal are deeply disturbed by Maoists
terror. The trouble is, even in a nation where the government's sole purpose is to protect and defend individual rights,
defending those rights requires a whole range of various kinds of governmental activity and support.
Norm Stanly argued "The libertarian ideal that if people will just fade away, then the predominant law-abiding citizens
can run things with a minimal of much more effectively; that is, gov't that only serves to keep people from interfering
with each other's rights and duties. That ideal implies lots of law-abiding citizens, i.e., people who usually don't
want to interfere with each other's rights and duties.
There are a whole lot of rights and duties when you get a large group of people into what we commonly see as a nation.
Further, it takes only a few terrorists to connive against the others, who then have either to take the law into their
own hands. If the latter, that means more action against the terror. If the former, then people and Gov have to organize
with leaders, subleaders, etc., and we are right back into our action.
Crises involving human disputes are how peace movement grow, and we have no better examples than in the good old world
With each war or other major crisis (Shays, Whiskey, etc., rebellions) the gov't has grown. When the crisis is over, the
gov't does not suddenly revert to its former size. Further, in a nation there are continual crises of one sort or
another as the many people intentionally or inadvertently step on each other's toes. Thus, the gov't is maintained.
The only way to keep a effective peace movement is to revert to small groups, but these are then subject to attack by
other groups and we are back into the neanderthal version of society.
Norm said "Closest thing in the U.S. to the libertarian ideal that I can see was the American Indian gov't, but that
again was predicated on small groups that could administer rights, duties and punishments easily among the populace.
There too we see their vulnerability: When an outside group wants its land or other assets, then they are too weak to
defend it because they are not organized = governed. That would be true if the U.S. became 50 nations and more. The
smaller your group is, then the weaker it becomes to outside predators".
In sum, the terrorisms are totally unrealistic about human wel fair and also discount the countless relationships among
the citizens that must continually be addressed and the only way to do that is by control and force = peace. Likewise,
the communists were utterly naive when they imagined that without capitalists, the problems created by them would
disappear and state would eventually wither away. Problems still occurred among its citizens and gov't didn't go away;
it became the problem.
I think that peaceful movements with modifications, have the best balance between individual and group rights. This
model usually maintains minimal conflict within the nation and is able to defend itself against outsiders, terrorists
and, if desired, able to attack terrorists or foreigners to further its citizens' interests. These programs sometimes
goes astray, but the model, so far, has been able to right itself without destroying itself.
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Kamala Sarup is an editor of peacejournalism.com