What's in a word?
Thursday, February 16, 2006
So over in the UK those wacky Brits voted to pass a bill sponsored by Tony Blair that, among other provisions, made the "glorification of terrorism" illegal.
Let's examine the definition of the word "glorify". I mean, it basically means "praise". Then there's the concept of terrorism. Terrorism is bad, of course. 9/11 was terrorism. However, there are cases that are murkier. Hamas is classified as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department - yet they're also the elected leaders of Palestine. Would then speaking well of them constitute praising terrorism?
It's strange, in this world, what terrorism really is. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Over 300 years ago some crazy colonists started a campaign to get rid of the British. Tossing tea out of a boat, armed battles, guerrilla warfare... WE would have been terrorists.
Thank god we have our first amendment, which protects things like freedom of speech, but unfortunately the British have no such thing (that's why we do, actually) and I fear that ideas like limiting speech praising terrorism might take hold around the world.
Let's examine the definition of the word "glorify". I mean, it basically means "praise". Then there's the concept of terrorism. Terrorism is bad, of course. 9/11 was terrorism. However, there are cases that are murkier. Hamas is classified as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department - yet they're also the elected leaders of Palestine. Would then speaking well of them constitute praising terrorism?
It's strange, in this world, what terrorism really is. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Over 300 years ago some crazy colonists started a campaign to get rid of the British. Tossing tea out of a boat, armed battles, guerrilla warfare... WE would have been terrorists.
Thank god we have our first amendment, which protects things like freedom of speech, but unfortunately the British have no such thing (that's why we do, actually) and I fear that ideas like limiting speech praising terrorism might take hold around the world.
posted by Burton at 10:14 PM
1 Comments:
As I've mentioned in my blog, terrorists are the new communists. Since the cold war is effectively over we need a new "enemy", 9/11 just gave us a handy one.
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