Using "terrorism" as a threat is simply the new "communism" arguments from the 1950s-1980s. It's just that this new era has no foreseeable end in site.

There has been, and always will be, some type of terrorists. So its a perfect opportunity to use this threat (whether real in some cases and not in some cases) to get something approved that you could not normally.

At least with the end of of the USSR, most of the old Cold War communism scare tactics went away. Unfortunately, I don't really foresee and end in the use of terrorism threats to get funding for some new technology or bill to erode more rights.

>...according to Hardt and Negri's Empire, the rise of Empire is the end of national conflict, the "enemy" now, whoever he is, can no longer be ideological or national. The enemy now must be understood as a kind of criminal, as someone who represents a threat not to a political system or a nation but to the law. This is the enemy as a terrorist....In the "new order that envelops the entire space of... civilization", where conflict between nations has been made irrelevant, the "enemy" is simultaneously "banalized" (reduced to an object of routine police repression) and absolutized (as the Enemy, an absolute threat to the ethical order"[2]).[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_%28Negri_and_Hardt_book...

That's the thing. "Terrorism" like "communism" previously is described as threat where regular laws are not strong enough and here needs to be an exception. Communism went away but terrorism will most likely never go away.

In fact if we end up patrolling Muslim neighborhoods as some presidential candidates have suggested, I suspect we'll only end up increasing terrorism.

I'm pretty sure that's the whole point. Politicians are generally asses, but not dumbasses.

The part of the US government that does this bullshit has no endgame except "more power". It's quite ridiculous.

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

--Hermann Göring

Didn't know this quote. Just saved it into my quote-book.

It is even more interesting, today, when you see the statement that prompted Göring to respond as such.

> "There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars." [0]

It is funny how quickly Congress delegated that power to the executive.

[0]: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp

Indeed. Anytime you hear the words "children" or "national security" or "terrorism" being bandied about, you should crank up the sensitivity on your bullshit detector.

> you should crank up the sensitivity on your bullshit detector.

mine has been turned up to 11 for about 15 years now.

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

-- Rahm Emanuel

That's actually a misattribution. Rahm stole it from Winston Churchill.

Standing in a security queue a couple of years ago at LA airport after a long haul flight listening to someone say "I can understand why they are like this after what happened" is as close to homicidal as I've ever felt.

yeah, it scares the people on the right, while "... for the children." is whats used to scare the left. How ANY of us made it to adulthood is amazing.

Eh, I've heard "for the children" on left and right. "Gay parents are bad for the children" "Spanking is bad for the children"

Until a few years ago a disciplinary spanking of a child was allowed in New Zealand and a woman was found not to have broken the law when she used a horse riding crop. TLDR an NZ style spanking is bad for the child.

Not surprising. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but growing up they used leather belts where I'm from. Pretty sure it's legal. To me that's worse than a riding crop.

I agree; it's even better than "think of the children".

Almost as good as "think of the children"

I don't remember the Bush Administration containing a lot of Rhodes Scholars. Of course the tactic predates them, but they don't know that.

That would be the Bush administration.

You misspelled government.

"government" in general didn't decide US law enforcement and intelligence agencies needed to make terrorism a top priority, and it didn't decide the US needed "extrajudicial" options for dealing with terrorism, such as torture, kidnapping and indefinite detainment in a death camp in Cuba, and didn't decide to wage a war against "terrorism."

All of these things are the direct result of the Bush Administration taking advantage of post-9/11 fears to push the PATRIOT Act, and the "new normal" that terrorism posed such a grave and existential threat that nothing, not even the Constitution or the rule of law, should be allowed to get in the way of fighting it.

That would be the Patriot Act that was voted for by (among others) Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, John Kerry, and Ted Kennedy, and whose reauthorization in 2006 was voted for by Barack Obama?

Yep. The "Bush Administration".

You're missing some of the things that have been done before the Bush Administration. Operation Northwoods is alarming as it is, and that's back in the early 60's.

Sure, but the FBI demanding warrantless access to browser history in order to fight terrorism, and expecting to get it, is a direct result of Bush administration policy.

The FBI is an executive branch agency, under direct control of the President, who, for nearly the last 8 years, has been Barack Obama.

Who started it is irrelevant if all following presidents continue to with it.