This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Zephram Stark (talk | contribs) at 19:11, 31 August 2005 (It looked like the foreplay was winding down, so I archived the crap, summarized the issue, and we can try again. Let's try a little respect this time, hu?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 19:11, 31 August 2005 by Zephram Stark (talk | contribs) (It looked like the foreplay was winding down, so I archived the crap, summarized the issue, and we can try again. Let's try a little respect this time, hu?)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Previous discussions:
The Main Event
If everyone is done with the foreplay, let's get on to the main event. We have a term that means something specific in usage, yet it means nothing very specific at all in our Misplaced Pages definition. We want to fix that. We want it to mean something specific. What has prevented us from doing so for all these years? Politics. It actually benefits some political organizations to have "terrorism" undefined, or defined so vaguely that it doesn't mean anything. When our leaders declare war on terrorism, the first thing we want to know is, who or what is our enemy? If we use Misplaced Pages as our source of definitions and it can't give us an answer, we have to rely on our leaders for a definition, "Terrorism is violence for the purpose of evil. It's pejorative and very technical. Just leave it to us. We know who the terrorists are." Obviously, the above definition does not work in a government of the people. It leaves the potential targets of our representatives open to be anyone. Those of us who saw how such power was abused in Nazi Germany and have vowed to never let such an atrocity happen again, will not allow our nations to adopt the same philosophy. Terrorism must have an objective definition. We must be able to universally identify when terrorism occurs and effectively communicate that information to others. The definition cannot be so loose that it could be interpreted to mean anything or anyone that our representatives want to target. Never again, always, and forever. --Zephram Stark 18:54, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
- So wikipedia and "our leaders" are the only sources of definitions of terms like this? Gosh it's too bad nobody has invented a dictionary or even better, an encyclopedia of terrorism that could help people understand such terms. And it's a shame there are no academic departments of political science or national security studies that might focus on such questions and develop definitions based on original research. It's too bad we don't already have a good start on definitions of terrorism that list some of the definitions already in use by experts. I guess it's up to us Wikipedians without any expertise in this area to do original research and come up with fancy new jargon to use to describe these phenomena, otherwise, if I follow your logic, we will be sending people to gas chambers any minute.--csloat 19:08, 31 August 2005 (UTC)