Column – Hearings should include all roots of violence
March 24, 2011 at 7:00 pm in Alexandria Echo Press
Conducting a congressional hearing about the ways in which Muslim Americans become “radicalized” is, in my opinion, a perfectly legitimate undertaking.
But, whoa! I must quickly add, not if the hearings are going to be limited to “just” Muslims. Continue Reading
“Some of the questions the committee hearings should explore are these:
• What effect does the Internet have on spreading lies, distortions and extremist ideologies to individuals and groups who use or advocate violence?
• What effect does relentless bullying have on young people who either commit suicide or lash out and kill others?
• Are unbalanced people spurred to action by the inflammatory statements made by politicians or famous people, such as rap singers?
• What societal forces contribute to feelings of alienation and rejection by so many individuals who join hate groups?”
If you get the answers to these questions, what do you suggest be done with it? More government programs? Censorship? Do you want the government to police the internet or just more closely police everyone’s ideas and opinions? What do you want to do with those pernicious “societal forces?”
Hinckley was pretty unbalanced and he was affected by a famous person: Jodie Foster. What do you want to do about people like that?
Government’s role in our country is not to micro-manage the culture. Who decides what an “extremist ideology” is? Who decides what consitutes a “hate group?”
Yes, the Columbine killers were terrorists. No one would describe their actions as anything less than causing terror. But do you want to psychologically profile every school kid in the country? Do we really want our country becoming an Orwellian nightmare?
The chief problem with liberalism is that it looks to government to solve everything, when it can barely take care of the responsibilities that it needs to meet, no matter what threat that represents to liberty, not to mention our pocketbooks.
I’m not suggesting that the police, or even the schools for that matter, become any less vigilant when it comes to intervening in real threats to public or school safety, but this whole column smacks of something else: an intervention in our lives that I’m not too sure we would like very much.
Beware the slippery slope.
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