[zanny]

Terrorist is todays communist, or yesteryears fascist, eugenicist, jap, negro, etc. Blanket arbitrary term to apply to dissenters you want to control and treat inhumanely, and society doesn't judge you for it because they are the "enemy" or "other". It incites an emotional response in people that let those holding the pen get away with way more than they should.

[davidjohnstone]

Slightly tangential, but I'm pretty sure eugenicists were never thought of in the same way as communists et al. In the US, eugenics was an important idea in the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, and while it wasn't universally liked (the Catholic church being a notable opponent), it did have broad social approval and at least a few countries practiced eugenics in some form. This all changed with Hitler and World War II, and now eugenics is another idea sidelined to the dustbin of history. (For now?)

As Wikipedia says: "At its peak of popularity, eugenics was supported by a wide variety of prominent people, including Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells, Norman Haire, Havelock Ellis, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Linus Pauling and Sidney Webb. Its most infamous proponent and practitioner was, however, Adolf Hitler who praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf and emulated Eugenic legislation for the sterilization of "defectives" that had been pioneered in the United States." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Supporters_and_critic...

[samscully]

Abortion of a foetus with an identifiable disability is considered acceptable today by many people, which is similar in spirit if not in practice to eugenics.

[moomin]

I'm sorry, but no. There's no equivalence in spirit between a crying mother deciding that it's in the best interests of her family to terminate a pregnancy and a bunch of scary-eyed fanatics trying to make humanity "better".

I'm assuming you've never known anyone go through that. It's a personal tragedy, not an intellectual issue.

[marianov]

"terminate a pregnancy"? Is there a name for the practice of using more convoluted words so as no to make people focus on the real meaning of the sentence? You could have used "terminate the carrying developing offspring within the body, by terminating said offspring's capacity for metabolism, growth or reaction to stimuli". OTOH, you mention "a crying mother", which IMHO should be compared to the other tragedy: "an innocent baby being torn apart, aspirated, poisoned or killed in some other way"

And there goes my karma down in 3,2,1,...

[moomin]

Believe me, I'm not trying to avoid the full meaning of the words. I'm merely pointing out that, contrary to what some people seem to wish to believe, the people making these decisions aren't avoiding them either.

The problem is: there's no good words to use, because they've been co-opted by political positions and value judgements. "Baby" indicates you're anti-abortion, "foetus" indicates you're pro-abortion. I went for pregnancy, because that implies the "potential to be a baby".

"Terminate" has the same problem. What are the alternatives? "Abort" is pretty much taken by the pro-lifers. It's such an emotive issue that in the UK, where there is no broad based political movement that wishes to outlaw it, medical professionals don't even have a word for it. They have words for specific procedures like EPRC, and as far as I can tell they change those terms every couple of years. And of course, the terminology is the same whether the pregnancy is still ongoing or not.

[SilasX]

"You ever noticed how there are no abortion doctors, only 'reproductive health physicians'?" -> no comedian's routine

[cristianpascu]

Hang in there, brother! :) You still have like 5 points of karma.

[SilasX]

Argument from emotion.

[antiterra]

Swooping down to declare a fallacy then immediately swishing your cape and dashing away is highly unlikely to gain much social traction or admiration.

Also, when arguing if something is in a particular spirit, it's appropriate to discuss emotions and principles.

[SilasX]

It was just a brief way of saying, "All you've communicated is that the equation of the two doesn't feel right, without giving anyone a reason to deem your view more persuasive."

This is basically what happened:

A: That seems dangerously close to eugenics, in that it's weeding out people with bad genes.

B: Oh yeah? If you distorted your view by listening to crying moms who agree with me (and not similar weepers on the other side), you'd agree with me.

Me: Argument from emotion.

[coldtea]

Yes. Because we are humans, not Vulcans.

Someone saying: "Don't hit me, please" is also an argument from emotion.

[astine]

That's not an argument, it's a request.

[moomin]

I claim that any argument about "in spirit" is necessarily about emotion. The original statement struck me as veering pretty close to Godwin's law.

[deadairspace]

Argument from fallacy.

[samscully]

I apologise, my comment was far too cold towards people who have been presented with that very distressing choice, I should have thought more carefully about it before posting.

[a-priori]

I'd say the reverse: that selective abortions are (maybe, in some cases) similar in practice, but not in spirit to eugenics. The difference is that eugenics had an imperative to it. They wanted to 'improve the human race' through selective breeding of humans. They were concerned about the population genetics as a whole, not an individual.

And yes, it was very much an accepted area of thought and research in academia from the late 1800s to the end of the second world war. It wasn't until it became associated with Nazi Germany that the idea became taboo.

[cristianpascu]

Or abortion of foetus if she's a girl. Or of a foetus of whatever gender if "we're too many", and one more would mean less confort for the others, less education, less whatever.

[smsm42]

There's a pretty big gap between dissent and blowing people up on the streets. So let's not engage in false equivalency.

[malandrew]

Considering that many people in these services apply the term terrorist to a lot more people and groups than Al Quaida, I really don't think it's a false equivalency.

The "War on Terror" is absurd because it's stateless and doesn't describe any one single group of people. It's a war on a very loose set of behaviors.

The average person thinks "War on Terror" and they support it because they have the people who brought down the Twin Towers in mind. Whereas people in the NSA, CIA, FBI, police stations across the country, etc, are thinking Occupy Wall Street, PETA, etc.

[Sharlin]

The grandparent didn't do that. His/her point was that governments do.

[anigbrowl]

But Governments are neither homogenous nor monolithic. Saying 'Governments do X' is like saying 'corporations are at the root of all our problems.' Reason along those lines, and pretty soon the only rational choice is to become a hermit and avoid society entirely. After all, society is made up of people, and people are well-known to engage in murder, rape, robbery, etc. etc. Therefore, people are the problem.

[grwkmewrlemw]

If someone is engaging in murder, rape or robbery, it would make sense to call attention to this fact, and then perhaps do something about it, wouldn't it? Parts of the US government are CURRENTLY misusing the word "terrorist" as a very broad label. This is very dangerous for the reasons discussed above. It's important to call attention to this problem if we have any hope of halting it.

[anigbrowl]

Yes - you call attention to the specific person engaging in those acts. When you overlook that requirement of specificity, you end up accusing people based on their membership in a class, eg 'all gypsies are thieves, X is a gypsy, therefore X is a thief.'

So saying 'the US government is doing X, and I think it's acting illegally because Y' - fine. But 'the US government is doing X and this will end badly because governments always oppress citizens' (an argument that has appeared here a lot lately) isn't fine, because it rests on a false premise.

[calibraxis]

It's clearly useful to describe a structure independently from its consitutent atoms. Anyone who doesn't do so is virtually unable to communicate.

Social structures do things, and are amenable to institutional analysis. This allows us to act without omniscience. Institutional analysis allows one to analyze institutions independently of individuals; replace all the people, and you may nevertheless expect similar outcomes. Thus we can perform institutional analysis on governments, corporations, mafias, economies, consumers, managers, startups, etc.

If this weren't the case, humans wouldn't form institutions in the first place.

[anigbrowl]

I wholly agree, but surely you've noticed that many people take the observation that 'some governments sometimes do things' to mean that 'all governments inevitably do those things,' which is plainly untrue.

[smsm42]

Governments can lie. But terrorist is not an arbitrary term to stifle dissent - it is a specific and identifiable tactic used to achieve certain goals. If somebody says black is white, it doesn't mean black and white are arbitrary labels that can be applied to anything. That's the false dichotomy that is offered to us.

[alan_cx]

Terrorist is an arbitrary term used to stifle dissent and demonide an opposition. One could use the term "freedom fighter" in it place and suddenly it has a whole new moral meaning.

We Brits know this well, as we referred to the IRA terrorists, while many Americans and Irish called them freedom fighters, while funding them.

Perhaps consider this when Nelson Mandela dies. A man who for years was considered a terrorist, but is now almost universally considered a freedom fighter.

Note: I have mode no moral judgement about either the IRA or Nelson Mandela.

The falseness is this is in the application of morality labels. "Terrorist" implies something wrong and evil. Freedom Fighter implies nobility. Both are people using violence to achieve political aims. Much like the US does. Which means many world wide have every right to consider the US a terrorist state, since that terror is by a democratically elected government.

[malandrew]

Exactly. This country was founded by terrorists.

    "The first recorded incident in America occurred in 1766: 
    Captain William Smith was tarred, feathered, and dumped 
    into the harbor of Norfolk, Virginia, by a mob that 
    included the town's Mayor."[0]

Claims of US perpetrated terrorism aren't even limited to the founding of the country. Take the downing of Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 and the Contras in Nicaragua for example[5]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarring_and_feathering

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_Liberty

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspée_Affair

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Marion

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_de_Aviación_Flight_455

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras

[eitland]

Terrorism implies the use of terror, -choosing targets and tactics not to inflict the biggest/smallest damage but to scare.

Typically this results in attacks on civilians instead of attacking enemy soldiers (who have been trained to handle fear). Other typical traits: using weapons that creates visible damage, injures etc

The sets of freedom fighters and terrorists might intercept but neither is a subset of the other.

[PavlovsCat]

I think the main problem the US has with sticking to a clear definition of terrorism is that it usually would apply to itself as well, so that's no good..

But yes, terrorism does mean something; just the way the word is used a lot, kinda doesn't... but this doesn't change what is terrorism and what is not. Even if someone where to argue that the ends justify the means, it would not change what those means are.