Terrorism. The word is thrown around so much and has been so completely distorted of meaning that very few people really understand what it means. As an example, I show this definition taken from an article written by Daniel MacAdams for the Ron Paul Institute.

Now, I have tremendous respect for the Ron Paul Institute and believe that MacAdams is doing yeoman work for the cause of liberty. In an otherwise excellent article, it is too bad that this definition was used. To give MacAdams the benefit of the doubt, though, it is not likely he could have found anything better in any of the “established” word definers.

This definition of terrorism is not exactly accurate in my opinion. Notice the words “the unlawful use…” According to this, if violence or threats are practiced legally, that is, through the normal law-making process of any individual government, then it is not terrorism. No matter how many civilians or foreign governments are intimidated or coerced through violence and/or threats to use violence, a legal assault is not considered terrorism.

I ask you. Did George W. Bush and his puppet-master, Dick Cheney, attack the sovereign nations of Iraq and Afghanistan? Did they exercise violence and threats against the civilian populations there which are still reverberating today? Did they topple established governments for the purpose of furthering political, social, and ideological objectives? Did they terrorize ordinary citizens for their own purposes, i.e., financial rewards and increased power? Did they rape, torture, kill, and steal in the name of all that is good and holy or was it because they had the “lawful” power to do so?

But, but, but…are the sputtering replies to these questions and others like them. After all, Congress did give their assent to these actions by granting the administration “emergency authorization powers” (a.k.a., green light), which simply means that Congress (which holds the purse strings and could have cut off funding) approved the actions…by abdication of responsibility, thereby making them “lawful”.

Is it a coincidence that almost the entirety of the word lawful is awful? Not as inspiring awe, but as extremely bad. Just saying.

If we modify the definition of terrorism to mean simply “frightening, scaring, intimidating, etc., people through the means of violence or the threat of violence”, then it is plain to see that governments world-wide are the largest perpetrators of terror and the 800-pound gorilla in the pack is the one located in our own back yard–Washington, D.C., USA. (I offer abject apologies to the species of gorilla for the comparison.) Further, over the 20^th century, it cannot be denied that various governments, including our own, ‘terrorized’ billions of people, even killing up to 100 million of them, perhaps more, in the never-ending quest for “furthering political, social, and ideological objectives.”