Creeds and Thoughtcrime

[Tim May]

Watching Attorney General Ashcroft announce the latest series of arrests of "terrorist financiers and sympathizers," it's clear that the last shreds of

Ashcroft is saying "the group's creed rejects any peaceful solution" (of the Palestinian situation).

Well, duh, since when does a group's _creed_ about foreign or domestic issues matter? (Modulo the usual exception, arguably, about creed's advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.)

And when is raising funds for use in foreign countries a matter for the U.S. government to outlaw? What about the liberal and black activists who raised money for the opposition in South Africa? Should Jesse Jackson have been arrested for shilling for the ANC "terrorists"?

And so on, for scores of cases where Americans excercised their freedom to send money to Jews fighting the Brits in Palestine, white farmers in Rhodesia fighting the communists trying to take control of the country, Polish mine strikers intent on collapsing the Soviet-backed government, thought criminals in China, Holocaust historians attempting to set the record straight, and, of course, mercenaries and Birchers and activists of every persuasion in hundreds of cases where Americans funded and even fought for various causes.

This notion that support for Jew terrorists is admissable, but support for Palestinian freedom fighters is thoughtcrime cannot be reconciled with the Constitution.

Ashcroft should be tried and executed.


--Tim May
"The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." --Frederic Bastiat