Motivation And Justification In The Las Vegas Massacre By Future Of Freedom Foundation!!
(2017-10-09 at 20:47:31 )

Motivation and Justification in the Las Vegas Massacre by Future of Freedom Foundation

Ever since the Las Vegas massacre, investigators have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what Stephen Paddocks motive was in killing all those people. So far, they still have not come up with an answer, but they are still trying.

What I find fascinating about this process is that no one in the mainstream press or, for that matter, anyone else, has accused the investigators of being justifiers. That is, no one is accusing the investigators of trying to justify Paddocks murder of all those people.

That is not the way it was with those of us who were talking about motive after the 9-11-01 attacks. Back then, here at the Future of Freedom Foundation we pointed out that motive of the 9-11-01 attackers was clear: They were retaliating for what the United States government had done in the Middle East, including the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children with United States sanctions, the stationing of United States troops near Islamic holy lands, the support of brutal dictatorships, and the unconditional support of the Israeli government.

The reaction among American statists? They went ballistic. "You are a justifier!" people screamed. "You are justifying what the terrorists have done! You hate America. You love the terrorists!"

It almost seemed as if all sense of rationality had disappeared from the United States. I have never received so much hate mail in all my life.

What was fascinating was that all that we were talking about was motive, just as investigators today are doing with Paddock. Figuring out why someone has committed a crime does not mean that you are defending the act or justifying it. It simply means that you are trying to figure out what motivated the person to commit the act.

In fact, while prosecuting attorneys are not required to establish motive in criminal cases, most of the time they do anyway so that the jury can more easily see that the person had reason to commit the crime. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, that does not mean that the prosecutor is defending or justifying the acts of the accused.

One of the most publicized examples of this phenomenon occurred in the 2008 race for the GOP nomination for president. It was during a presidential debate between the Republican candidates, including Ron Paul.

The subject of the 9-11-01 attacks came up during the debate. Paul brought up motive. He said that the 9-11-01 attackers came over here to kill us in retaliation for the United States governments killing of people over there.

All hell broke loose. Rons opponents went ballistic. The debate moderators went ballistic. The GOP audience went ballistic.

They all toed the official line - that Ron was justifying or defending what the terrorists had done and was blaming America for the 9-11-01 attacks when, in actuality, all that Ron was doing was pointing to what had motivated the 9-11-01 attackers to do their dirty deed.

Why was there such an enormous outcry when we libertarians pointed toward United States foreign interventionism as the motivating factor in the 9-11-01 attacks?

First, the federal government has come to hold an exalted and even holy position in the hearts and minds of many Americans. The government is their everything. It provides them with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, subsidies, and other welfare. It also protects them from the communists, terrorists, drug dealers, illegal immigrants, Muslims, ISIS, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and other scary creatures. The federal government is their provider, their disciplinarian, their parent, and even their god.

Second, many people are unable to draw a distinction between the federal government and the country. In their minds, they are one and the same thing. Therefore, when we libertarians pointed to United States foreign policy as the motivating factor behind the 9-11-01 attacks, some people viewed our observation as one directed at America rather than one directed at the federal government.

Their conflation of the federal government and the country was what caused them to conclude that we were "blaming America," when in fact we were simply pointing out the role that federal interventionism abroad had played in motivating the terrorists to retaliate.

Third, interventionists did not want people to be focusing on United States interventionism abroad as the motivating factor behind the attacks. If people started looking in that direction, they might conclude that foreign interventionism was not worth the cost of ever-increasing terrorist retaliation, along with all the infringements on civil liberties that come with a "war on terrorism." They might demand that the United States government bring all the troops home from everywhere.

Nonetheless, sixteen years after the 9-11-01 attacks I get the feeling that most American have come to the realization that United States interventionism abroad generates terrorism "blowback" here at home.

The question that Americans need to decide is: Is the foreign interventionism worth it in terms of the terrorist retaliation it spawns and the loss of liberty that comes with it, not to mention the out-of-control federal spending and debt that is threatening our nation?

Moreover, as I have also been pointing out in my articles (see, for example, "United States Violence Abroad Begets Violence at Home" and "Charlottesville and Americas Death Machine") I contend that what appear to be irrational acts of mass violence in America are also rooted in the United States death machine abroad.

If I am right, then Americans have to ask themselves whether these unexplained acts of mass violence, along with terrorist blowback, along with out of control federal spending and debt, are worth an interventionist foreign policy.

Printed here with permission from Mr. Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation!! Their Great Website!!