April 30:  Third Quiz.  
April 28:  No class.  Online review quiz to be taken in WEBCT.  

Beetle Bailey Cartoon

April 23:   September 11, 2001:  A Turning Point for America’s Future?   Power Point presentation on 9/11 as a Turning Point in History.  Strauss and Howe:  Millennials Rising.  

April 21.  Social movements are about the Future, they are about Changing Society.  Yet, they often put more effort into denouncing existing reality than into articulating visions of the future. The future cannot be studied in the same way as the past, but there are methods of future analysis.   The goal is not to predict exactly what will happen, which we known what can be done, but to consider four kinds of futures:  the Possible, Probable, Preventable and Preferable.  Social movements might be helpful in defining alternative preferences or visions of what the world might be, e.g., the slogan of the World Social Forum "Another World is Possible."  We then have to decide whether our preferable future is possible or probable by analyzing trends, resources, etc.  Perhaps the most we can do is prevent an undesirable future.

Consider the movements we have studied this semester:  could we have predicted them?  Some are self-directed (p 59 in the book), they advocate the interests of groups that believe they are oppressed, e.g, blacks, gays, women, victims of abuse, .  We can predict that groups that are oppressed and perceive the possiblity of improving their situation are likely to form a movement.  Some are other-directed, acting to help others, animals, the environment, war, etc.  We could predict that as conditions get worse movements are likely to emerge, or as danger seems imminent, e.g., an anti-war movement will emerge if and when war is proposed.  Our ability to predict trends in the underlying problems is weak, e.g, resource depletion. Sometimes the link between the underlying cause and the movement is questionable, e.g., recovered memories of abuse, alien abduction.  People will continue to have problems, but there are many possible explanations for their frustration that can be mobilized by entrepreneurs.

What oppressed groups are there that may become more active in mobilizing movements?  NAMBLA?  Hookers?  PotHeads?  
What social problems are likely to get more acute?   The environment and globalization are most often mentioned
What new technologies may create problems?  Robotics, genetic modification, nanottechnology.  

 The Battle of Seattle and the Future of Social Movements.  The Future of Social Movements After the Consolidation of Globalization.  Notes from a New Social Movements Conference. Book Review:  Empire by Niall Ferguson.    World Social Forum. - What Are We For? -  SingularityWatch.   Vernor Vinge on The Singularity.  Transhumanism.   Meet the Extropians.  

Music and social movements:  Music is used to build solidarity within movements.  Often is expresses grievances and repats messages over and over.  The goal is to build solidarity.  However, the music varies from one historical period to another, and according to the group, e.g., industrial workers, southern blacks, sixties students.

Some CD's with clips on Amazon.   Fellow Workers.  Sing for Freedom.  Vietnam:  Songs from the Divided House.  Songs of Protest.  Universal Soldiers.  

April 16  We will begin with a segment from a.video on Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, begins with the Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  

What role did King play as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement?  Would the social forces have played out the same without his personal  leadership?  Other civil rights leaders:  Malcolm X comes to mind.  Stokeley Carmichael.   Bayard Rustin.  James Farmer.  Jesse Jackson.   Al Sharpton.    

Functions of leaders:
Organizers
Decision-Makers
Symbols

Personal Traits of Leaders:
Charisma - an intangible trait but very important.  A person seems to be greater than life, in touch with the divine.
Prophecy - view of the future, inspiring
Pragmatism - gets things done, realistic

US Marine Corps list of leadership traits:  JJ DID TIE BUCKLE

These traits may be in conflict.  Also, of course, leaders conflict, over their prophecies as well as simply over power and influence.  Each movement has different types of leaders, e.g., King and Malcolm X.

Some leaders we can look at:  Velupillai Prabhakaran   wanted by Interpol -  Abimael Guzmán  -  Osama binLaden -  Jerry Fallwell - Phyllis Schlafly - Mahatma Gandhi  -  Samuel Gompers  -  Eugene Debs  

April 14:  Social movements are not relatively permanent like social institutions.  They emerge, grow, develop and eventually wither away.  Various authors have observed stages in this process:

It is hard to say when movements begin.  Some theorists believe that they emerge spontaneously when people who share a common problem begin to feel dissatisfied, perhaps because conditions have gotten worse, or at least because they stopped getting better, or not as quickly.  There is Davies J-Curve theory, which was developed to explain when revolutions occurred, but can be applied to social movements in genera..  This is the "collective behavior" school in sociology.  Another theory, "resource mobilization," says that discontent is always there and that movements emerge when someone has the resources to mobilize it.  Resources include communication skills, leadership skills, time, money, political support.  At the early stage, the leaders tend to be intellectuals and public speakers.  Sometimes movements are galvanizaed by books, e.g., Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique or Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring or Thomas Paine's Common Sense or Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed.  .  Not all efforts to galvanize movements succeed, e.g., the Men's Movement.  Numerous books have been written trying to start one, and there have been beginnings, but there doesn't seem to be a critical mass.  Perhaps there is no charismatic leader.  Others are galvanized by brilliant orators - Spartacus, Martin Luther King.  Sometimes the leader is a religious or spiritual figure, e.g., Gandhi.  Or a labor leader, Debs, Marighela.  One could also look at the world's leading religions as social movements started by charismatic leaders, e.g., Jesus, Mohammed.  There are still leaders starting new religions, the Unification Church.  Other movements may start without a single leader, e.g., the student movement of the 60s and 70s.  

There may be a generational cycle to the emergence of social movements.  Strauss and How argue that there are 25 year generational cycles, with an active generation being succeeded by a more passive one.  The active generations alternate between  Idealist and Civic versions.  The Idealist are likely to generate moralistic movements.  The generation that came of age in the 1960 was the last Idealist generation.  
9/11 as a Turning Point in History (power point presentation at the World Future Society, July 20, 2002)

Once movements are started, they develop movement organizations.  There is typically a period of internal conflict as the movement tries to define its goals and tactics.  There are splits between radical and reformist tendencies.  Different agitators compete in offering visions of the future.  The original leaders may be cast aside as old fashioned.  Ideologies may change.  This is a difficult period, and movements may fall apart and lose effectiveness.  A statesman is needed to pull things together.  

After this, comes the period of formalized decision-making with strong organizations exercising control.  These may become established pressure groups with little interest in changing society.  If radicals succeed in taking power, they may become the new established order.  One can think of this in the history of the Christian movement, which went trhorugh its mobilization stage in the first century or two.  Eventually the church went from a persecuted movement to an established hierarchal part of the established order, e.g., the Roman Catholic Church with the Pope.  Even so, conflict can break out and new religious movements can emerge, e.g., Protestantism, but they must deal with the hegemony of the established church.

We can use this framework to examine the history of certain social movements, such as the civil rights movement  (timeline2, history) and the feminist movement.  The antiwar movement may not fit so well, since it is responsive to international events rather than to its internal dynamics.

April 9:
Peace movements have a long history, going back to Aristophanes play Lysistrata where Athenian women, fed up with the Peloponnesian War, barricade themselves in the Acropolis and go on a sex strike to force their husbands to vote for peace with Sparta.  I think this is just fiction, but it has inspired many women's peace movements and activities.  
Some religions, such as the Quakers, have renounced war altogether for hundreds of years.  This is based on Biblical teachings, e.g.,

Isiah, 2:4 He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore

Luke 6
²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. ³⁰Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back

But the other view can also be found in the Bible.  

Deuteronomy 12:2-4  Ye shall surely destroy all the places, wherein the nations that ye are to dispossess served their gods, upon the high-mountains, and upon the hills, and under eery leafy tree.  And ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and burn their Asherim with fire;  and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods;  and ye shall destroy their name out of that place.
Deuteronomy 20:10, 12-13 and 16-17:
When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight against it...and if it will make no peace with thee...thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword, but the women, and the little ones and the cattle...shalt thou take for a prey unto thyself...thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.  Howbeit of the cities of these peoples, that the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, but thou shalt utterly destroy them:  the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.
 
Throughout history the Hawks and the Doves have struggled against each other.  There is clearly an archetypal psychological difference here, although the metaphor of Hawk and Dove goes back only to 1962.  The Hawks project their hostile feelings outwards, while the doves p;roject their compassionate and vulnerable feelings onto others, while directing their hostility towards their own nation's leaders.  These groups fought it out before WWII, with some people, such as Albert Einstein, changing sides.  He abandoned pacifism because he thought Hitler was just too terrible and would not respond. The US tried to stay out, through isolationism, rather than pacifism.  The British tried desperately to make peace with Hitler, making concession after concession. Prime Minister  Chamberlain's speech announcing peace in our time became the classic example of the sin of appeasement, Churchill's view was vindicated in the judgment of most people.  

It seems to me that peace movements often fail, perhaps usually fail, although it is also true that the nuclear holocaust we feared throughout the 1955 to 1999 period never materialized.  But this was not due to following the prescription of the peace movement.  The Vietnam war movement succeeded in a sense, but only because we were defeated or worn out militarily.  The anti-Iraq war movement failed to prevent the war.  The paper  Why Peace Movements Fail , written in 1982, may give us some insight into why peace movements fail.  The Anti-War Movement in the United States. gives the history of anti-war movements, which does seem to be one of persistent failure.  

Does this apply to the Vietnam War movement? This is one that I was active in for many years, as recorded in my FBI File.  Jerry Rubin at the Yippee convention.  What did Vice President Agnew think of us?  Sometimes there is a generational difference between professors whose political ideas were formed in the 1960s and students of today.  

Peace Movements in  South Jersey today.  

Roots of Arab Anti-Americanism?   And anti-Americanism in the United States.  Is it love of peace, or hatred of America?  

April 7:  we had a visit from a member of the Camden 28 who spoke on campus on Saturday, April 5, 6:30 in the student center.

April 2:  Arguments from Conspiracy.  Eustace Mullins on the Oklahoma City conspiracy.  We will view part of the video Cover-up in Oklahoma which claims that the whole explosion was really a government conspiracy.

• Conspiracy theories are used to explain an otherwise ambiguous evil or a pattern of anomalies
• Conspiracy theories are satisfying because they explain everything, leaving nothing to chance or mystery.  Conspiracy theories provide reassurance against doubt.  The stronger the evidence against a conspiracy, the more certain we may be of the ability of the conspirators to deceive in devious ways.  
• They provide a target for feelings of anger or hostility.  Conspirators have evil motives, they are doing it on purpose, it is not just chance.  Often they provide an excuse for personal failure, e.g., a stock market crash that drives someone bankrupt is not caused by random market forces but by schemers from one devious group or another, e.g., Jews, Chinese, bankers, easterners.  
• Conspiracies make events part of a struggle between good and evil.
• Real conspiracies do exist, so disproving conspiracy theories is difficult.  
• Conspiracy theorists often insist that others disprove their claims.  They are irrefutable since the put the burden of proof on the critic.
  

• The Kennedy assasination has engendered a tremendous number of conspiracy theories, often as soon as one is disproved another pops up.  These may simply be "hobbyist" interest or they lmay be part of a more general worldview, e.g., anti-government or anti-communist.
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery that has provided a rationale for many anti-Jewish movements throughout history.  
• Others mention in my article on the psychology of conspiracy theories.  Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas, Alien Abduction, AIDS, Martin Luther King assassination, drugs in the ghetto, Japanese economy, Iranian hostage release.
  

  Arguments from Transcendence.  These are really critical for movements, they argue that their cause or argument is more powerful than the other side's.  In many cases, there are simply unreconcilable principles so no amount of logical argumentation or factual information can settle the issue.  Narrative argumentation can sometimes help by showing sympathetic cases.  Often people just repeat their viewpoint insistently and ignore the arguments on the other side.  This leads to polarization.  Several kinds of arguments are used::

• Quantity, more people agree with us than with you
• Quality, our argument is true, pure, valid while the opposition is untrue, impure, invalied
• Value, our goal is so important that it outweighs other goals, even though those goals are valid
• Hierarchy, our group or ideal or cause is higher in the scheme of things than others

How can these arguments be applied to the causes that you are arguing?  Take the Gulf War as an example.
    Quantity:  the whole world is against the war, or most of it?  But most Americans are pro, at least for now.  Which is the constituency?  How do you measure support?  This gets into how one poses the question.
    Truth:  is Hussein really a terrible danger, does he have WMD's?  Is he likely to use them or can he be contained?  These are points that involve large unknowns.
    Value:  Is war always wrong?  Thou Shalt Not Kill?  Or Thou Shalt Not Murder.  This raises the topic of the ethics of war.  Some take an absolute pacifist position, e.g., Quakers, peace churches.  Most people believe this is not sustainable.  The Just War Theory is more widely accepted.  Look at Jimmy Carter's essay that the Gulf War is immoral, contrasted to John McCain's essay.   Jimmy Carter   -  John McCain.

Web sites with  Opinions on the war:  Patriots for the Defense of America.    War on Iraq.  We will discuss anti-war movements next Monday.

    Hierarchy:  does the US national interest trump other nation's interests?  This seems to be an underlying point that determines people's beliefs on this issue, although it is not so often stated as a rationale.

Another case that revolves around Arguments from Transcendence is the Palestinian/Zionist conflict.
Historical Background:
In 1947, the UN General Assembly voted the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.  In 1948, the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq invaded Israel, and many or most Palestinian Arabs fled from Jewish territory.  Some of them were drive out by Jewish terrorists, many left at the suggestion of the invading Arab armies.  The Israeli army was small and inexperienced, but it succeeded in holding off the Arabs.  Israel has won a series of wars since then.  In 1956 it invaded Egypt, after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, and conquered the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, but it removed its troops from the Sinai and UN border guards were sent.  In 1967, Nasser closed the port of Elat, and had the Un troops pulled out and in 6 days Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the Sinai peninsula of Egypt, the Golan Heights of Syria, and the West
 Bank and Arab sector of E Jerusalem (both under Jordanian rule), thereby giving the conflict the name of the Six-Day War.  In 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked on Yom Kippur, and were initially successful, but the Israelis mobilized and drove them out, crossing the Suez canal and encircling the Egyptian Third Army, clearing a path to Cairo.  The Soviets threatened to intervene and Israel pulled back.  I think the account on page 103 of our book gives too much credit to the Egyptian army, in fact it was defeated.  After that Sadat made peace with Israel and Israel gave back the Sinai.

Since this time, Israel has occupied all of Palestine, and the Palestinians have turned to demonstrations, stonings and terrorism - the Intifada - making the struggle one of Israel vs. the Palestinians rather than Israel vs the Arab Nations.  The US had consistently tried to mediate.  There are moderates or doves on both sides who try to find a peaceful solution and extremists on both sides who want to drive the other side out by force.  The Israeli extremists keep building settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza in an effort to "establish facts on the ground."   Maps of settlements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights  in 1993 show why Palestinians believe the Israelis are trying to take over the whole country.  New settlements continue to be built. See UN Site on the Question of Palestine.  Many Israelis argue that Israel should have all the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean, Palestinian extremists seek it all for themselves.  Moderates seek a compromise, a division.  The Israeli government under Barak last year offered unmprecedented concessoins, but the Palestinians felt they were not enough and mobilized for more.  The Israelis had occupied the south of Lebanon, but they pulled out, giving the Arabs their first "victory" over Israel.  Hizbollah claims responsibility for this.  The PLO under Yasir Arafat claims not to condone terrorist acts, at least against civilians within Israel, but the Israelis accuse it of tolerating them in fact.

In the last year or so suicide bombings have become the most effective tactic used by the Palestinians to terrorize the Israeli population.  This has destroyed tourism to Israel and cut back on immigration.  The Israelis have no way to stop all these people and usually respond with retaliatory strikes against Palestinian institutions, often against the Palestinian security forces.  These stir up more resentment and hostility and we have an escalation of "tit for tat" violence.  Each side can give an extensive litany of the abuses of the other, justifying its behavior by the abuses it has suffered.

Psychology, suicide bombing involves a love/hate relationship, similar to murder/suicides in marital or workplace conflicts.  It is rooted in feelings of powerlessness, when people feel they have no way to get what they desperately want.  The Arabs both hate and admire the Israelis, want to be more like them.  This is sometimes revealed in remarks that slip out.  For example, Gen. Rashid Qureshi, the public relations chief for President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan told Newsweek (April 1, 2002, p. 26) that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were so well coordinated, so brilliantly executed, that it was inconceivable an Arab organization could have carried them out.  "Who else [but Israel] coudl have done it?" he asked.  He since moderated his views, but in September he repeated a rumor that has been heard repeatedly throughout the Pakistan, and reported in newspapers there, that the Jewish employees in the World Trade Center had all mysteriously called in sick on the 11th.  One Palestinian legislator said "If you don't choose your type of death yourself, Sharon will do it for you.  All of Tulkarm is proud [of Abdel-Basset Odeh, a local suicide bomber].  None of us wants to kill civilians, but we are obliged to defend ourselves.  We have nothing else with which to fight this huge machine of israel's.  They have everything;  they have all the power.  We have nothing but our bodies."  His older brother said "Everyone's proud of him.  this is a war.  Yes, he's the one who changed everything."

American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism say:
                    Many Muslims both here and abroad have chosen to deal with feelings of powerlessness and
              inferiority by indulging in violent rhetoric or actual violence against noncombatants, stretching
              Islamic justifications to cover up any moral misgivings. This can only be possible when emotions
              rule over common sense, when the world is cleanly and artificially divided into good and evil, and
              when non-Muslims are so dehumanized as to make even the most innocent among them guilty of
              the death penalty.
                   Unfortunately, many Muslims in America take the simplistic "West is always bad, Muslims are
              always good" line to heart and begin acting like the stereotypes that we hate so much. Many
              Muslims are strangely schizophrenic; on one hand they condemn the portrayal of Islam in the
              media as a violent religion, but at the same time they engage in inflammatory violent rhetoric
              against real or perceived enemies. We rightfully decry the terrorism of sanctions against Iraq or the
              Israeli bombing of Lebanon, but we are studiously silent about - or worse, supportive of - Muslim
              terrorist bombings of Western targets

In an impromptu statement in 1991 to students at Cairo University, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is reported (by Ephraim Dowek, an Egyptian Jew serving as Israel's ambassador to Egypt;  Commentary, April 2002, p. 26):

Against us stood the most intelligent people on earth--a people that controls the international press, the world economy, and world finances.  We succeeded in compelling the Jews to do what we wanted;  we received all our land back, up to the last grain of sand!  We have outwitted them, and what have we given them in return?  A piece of paper!...We were shrewder than the shrewdest people on earth!  We managed to hamper their steps in every direction.  We have established sophisticated machinery to control and limit to the minimum contacts with the Jews.  We have proven that making peace with Israel does not entail Jewish domination and that there is no obligation to develop relations with Israel beyond those we desire.

Israel has a percapita GDP of $18,900 - the Palestinians have a per capita GDP of $1680.  The Israelis have an infant mortality rate of .08%;  for the Palestinians it is 2.6%.  Of all Arab populations, the best off in terms of objective social and economic indicators are the Arab citizens of Israel (with the possible exception of citizens of some small oil rich enclaves on the Persian gulf, if one looks only at statistics for citizens).

Solutions.  To many the final solution is obvious:  a partition along approximately the 1967 border lines, with some adjustments and generous financial compensation for Palestinians not able to return to their ancestral lands in Israel proper.  Barak offered much of this in 1999, but it was either not enough (he offered 90% of the land in the occupied territories, but kept 70% of the settlements) or the Arabs were not ready to accept it.  Right now, Israel is attempting to root terrorism out with military action against the whole population of the occupied territories.  This seems unlikely to succeed, unless it goes so far as ethnic cleansing, which is probably impossible in the international conflict.  As Prof Ariel Merari of Tel Aviv University says, "What Israel is doing now is not helpful,  it is not enough to deter the Palestinians but it is more than enough to provoke them.   And that is quite a serious mistake."

Another example is the Affirmative Action issue, argued in the Supreme Court on April 1.  Here we have two "rights":  racial equality and individual rights.  The Supreme Court tries to find a way to wiggle out of the dilemma by looking at nuances.  An op-ed essay from today's Inquirer by Acel Moore.     John McWhorter is a black professor who argues against racial preferences in universities.  

March 26 -  Last class we focused on political argument in social movements.  This approach is analytical, it seeks to persuade through the use of logical argumentation.  Usually the argument starts from general premises, which are the person's ideology or political perspecitve, and uses the premises to reach a conclusion about the particular case.  Different conclusions come from different premises, in most cases, rather than different facts.

Narrative Argument differs from Analyical Argument.  It uses stories or narratives as frameworks for interpreting reality.  Perhaps this will fit more of the arguments we are looking at or writing.  A narrative has an author, a protagonist and an audience.  The goal is to get the audience to identify with the protagonist, to identify with the "good guy" and oppose the "bad guy."  Heroes are very important to narratives, as are enemies.  There is also a plot, to hold our interest.  We want to know how things will turn out.  Explanatory stories try to get us to accept certain values and theories about the world by putting them into a story where good and evil are in struggle.  How is our Flash Video narrative going?

An example, the Militia or Patriot Movement:  Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City. Stormfront.org is a source on this movement, as well as on anti-semitism in general.  Eustace Mullins' essay on the Oklahoma City conspiracy.  .   This is one of the terrorist cases we looked at briefly last week, Timothy McVeigh.  He bought this narrative, in a book called The Turner Diaries.  A novel about a 1991-93 American revolution by "The Organization" against the "Zionist Occupied Government."  (this is Revolutionary Reaction).  This involves beliefs about the theories about Gun Control.

The other case in the chapter is the Panama Canal controversy.

How about the Gulf War controversy?  What was the narrative in the video we saw?

Some Narrative Stories:
Mona Charen:  Bush Shows Vision, Purpose.
Jane Eisner:  A Different Kind of Leadership.
Immanuel Wallerstein:  Bush Bets It All.
Patrrick Buchanan.  Is George W. Bush an Imperialist?

This is a longer essay from the master narrative theorist, Noam Chomsky.  In his narratives, there is a heroic struggle between the Evil (American) Empire and the innocent victims and resistance fighters.   Confronting the Empire.
 

March 24 - Public Opinion in the US more pro-war, rest of the world less so?  The Economist March 13.  Chileans undress to protest.

An Argument as defined here is:

1. a linking of ideas in support of identifiable propositions
2. a clash in reasoning between two differing points of view supported by different parties

Although there may be an infinite number of positions that can be argued, in practice they seem to fall into categories such as "left and right" or "liberal, moderate, conservative."  The categories vary from country to country and time to time, they are sociological and psychological as well as philosophically logical.  E.g., in Latin America "liberalism" means free market capitalism.  "Neoliberalism" is under attack by "anti-globalists" or anti-somethings.  E.g., The World Social Forum.

Our book uses Clinton Rossiter's typology of seven political philosophies which are drawn from a study of the American political spectrum, but I wonder if Standpattism doesn't go between Liberalism and Conservatism.  He is a conservative and puts conservatism in the center.  One could view them as a normal curve with standpattism as the mean.  Or you can view them as a circle where extremes meet, as the textbook says.

1. Revolutionary Radicalism
2. Radicalism
3. Liberalism
4. Conservatism
5. Standpattism
6. Reaction
7. Revolutionary Reaction

   Revolutionary Radicals Radicals Liberals Moderates Conservatives Reactionaries Revolutionary Reactionaries

Or we could view it as multidimensional, e.g.,   left/right;  active/inactive,  democratic/authoritarian,  pacifist/militarist,  feminist/patriarchial,  racist/anti-racist,  pro-life/anti-life,  etc.

The authors also have seven types of arguments that go between the positions.  This draws attention to the fact that most debate, or perhaps the most useful debate, is between adjacent ideologies.  This is perhaps most useful for our purposes, since it focus on the actual arguments:

1. Revolutionary
2. Insurgent
3. Innovative
4. Progressive
5. Retentive
6. Reversive
7. Restorative
8. Revolutionary

How about your arguments, as expressed on your Student Homepages, if we can access them.  What kind of logic do they portray?  Who are they arguing against?  Or, what are they FOR?  A big problem with political rhetoric is that it is often clearer who people are against than what they are for.
Roberty Byrd and George Bush's arguments on page 5 of the March 24, 2003 Gleaner.

March 10 -
What is terrorism? Not a movement but a tactic used by many different movements.  The definition is controversial since "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter."  All military action can be terrifying, yet we distinguish between terrorism and legitimate military action.  This into the ethics of war which includes not only the question of when war is justified but rules about how wars should be conducted. The issue of the ethics of war is also raised by the Iraq war.  Here are two op-ed essays we can compare: Jimmy Carter   -  John McCain.

Ethical theories cnsider intentions (deontological ethics) and/or consequences, eg., in the Arab/Israeli conflict the Israelis kill more Palestinians than vice versa, but they do not intentionally target civilians.  Suicide bombers do. Which is more ethical?

  Is George Bush an International Terrorist as Bretton Barber, a high :
school junior in Dearborn Heights, Mich., who is deeply interested in civil liberties, argued with a T-shirt that got him sent home from school on Feb. 17.   Noam Chomsky, MIT linguist, is known for denouncing the US as terrorist.  He blames global capitalism for the 9-11 attacks.    But the Turkish Government is prosecuting Chomsky as a terrorist.  People on the left such as Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky tend to define "terrorism" as repression by the state, based on the fact that this causes more misery for people.  They argue that the U.S. is a terrorist state.  Governments tend to define terror as action by non-governmental, clandestine groups.

Why do people commit terrorist acts?  Are they irrational or is terrorism a rational way to achieve their goals?  All behavior is over-determined, meeting both emotional and rational needs.  People tend to see the emotional or irrational factors in motivations of people with whom they disagree, as discussed in Persuasion and Social Movements, Chapter 4:

• people engage in social movements to satisfy personal needs as well as to help others or to achieve benefits for themselves.  This may be especially true because the individual derives no direct personal benefit from movements (free rider problem).
• there may be different types of people in different movements, e.g., "authoritarian" vs. "democratic or liberated" personalities.  People generally perceive the psychological problems of people in movements they do not like.  Maslow describes the authoritarian, sometimes called the "bicycle" personality, people who bow down to authority and kick those below.  Nazis were often thought to be authoritarian personalities, related to anti-semitism.  But it is difficult to measure personality traits of a large population. Internet Hate Groups as Examples.  Nicole White's site.
How about anti-war activists?  Rothman and Lichter gave projective tests to New Left activists and found them to be characterized by weakened self-esteem, injured narcissism an dparanoid tendencies.  They were preoccupied with power and were attracted to ideologies that answered their doubts and offered clear and unambiguous answers to their problems.
 

A good summary is psychiatrist Jerrold Post's testimony to Congress on Terrorist Organizations and Motivations. which is assigned reading for the course.  I will not summarize this in the notes, you should link to it and read it.

We can examine this in the lives of terrorist leaders, as in my paper on Terrorist Beliefs and Terrorist Lives, on WEBCT, which is assigned reading.  We can look at these cases in more detail after the break.