overbroad definitions

[hudebnik]

OK, so antoniseb points us to HR 1955 and S 1959, which are both entitled "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007". Unless there's something really well hidden in there, I don't think these are an imminent danger to the American Way, but they have some wild definitions:

VIOLENT RADICALIZATION

The term `violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.

HOMEGROWN TERRORISM

The term `homegrown terrorism' means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE

The term `ideologically based violence' means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs.

So let's see what these terms really mean in practice. For example, any national government qualifies as a "group". War certainly qualifies as "the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence." Most if not all wars, including the Iraq war, are intended "to promote the [national government]'s political, religious, or social beliefs," hence almost all wars qualify as "ideologically based violence."

Now let's consider "homegrown terrorism" in the light of a police officer who sees a suspicious-looking character fleeing the scene of a burglary, mugging, rape, etc. The prevention of such crimes is indisputably "a social objective", check. The police officer is "born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States," check. As soon as the police officer pulls a gun and shouts "Stop! Police!", (s)he is threatening the use of violence in order to intimidate or coerce a small segment (maybe one or two people) of the civilian population of the United States, so (s)he has become a Homegrown Terrorist.

The definition of "violent radicalization" depends on the aforementioned definition of "ideologically based violence," as well as on the very subjective notion of "extremist belief system." Some of us might think believing in Saddam Hussein's WMD's in defiance of the evidence and multiple commission reports is an "extremist belief system," and that system did indisputably "facilitate" the initiation of the Iraq war, which as we have already seen is "ideologically based violence," so anybody who adopted or promoted that belief is committing "violent radicalization."

Now, I don't really want to discover ways to "prevent" police officers from apprehending criminal suspects, but that's one of the things this Commission is charged with doing. OTOH, I'd love to see a National Commission look into ways to prevent wars, and most especially ways to prevent the use of extremist propaganda to incite wars. Somehow I don't think that's what they're going to look into :-)