I apparently wrote the following in 2012, revisited it on June 1, 2017 for some reason, and am again revisiting it.  Today is the 27^th day of August, 2026.  The time spanned is interesting but, perhaps even more, so is the relevance.  The protagonists are, I assume, Citadel classmates, some of whose names have been changed to protect the guilty:

We were supposed to play softball against a group of local VMI alumni but the day which had started out under a bright golden sun set in a field of robin’s egg blue had made a drastic turn about ten minutes before game time and we’d retired to a local Irish pub where we’d had a dart tournament of sorts instead.  After we’d split a few pitchers, a few of us wound up, a bit tipsy in the basement bar at Mike’s house.

We’d shot the shit for quite a while, getting a bit more buzzed as we watched Sunday afternoon football, then finding ourselves in that twilight waiting for the Sunday night game, buzzed enough to take on the world’s problems, … again.  We’d all been political science or history majors but most of us had gravitated towards the business world after a sojourn exploring rice paddies of Southeast Asia.

I hadn’t been paying all that much attention, truth be told, I might have been snoozing, until a bit of acrimony crept into our discussions.

Bill had once explained his theory of legitimized violence to me in the context of what he referred to as our reverse Robin Hood socioeconomic system.  “Since impunity is rampant”, he’d said, “new mechanisms need to evolve to create and police social justice and that, at least in a state of transition, must involve successful challenges to the state monopoly on legitimate use of violence.  The bad guys now own all major states and most if not all minor states so the conditions that led to the implicit decision to surrender personalized use of violence no longer exist.  But unlimited violence won’t work either.”

He was off on a similar vein again, this time, trying to put terrorism into some kind of ethical context.  I think most of us acknowledged the problem but few saw terrorism as the answer.  So Woody, I think, asked Bill if he had any kind of workable solution.

“Terrorism has no boundaries so while in the short term, it provides a kind of superficially reactive sense of justice, it in fact adds to injustice” Bill explained.  “There is no accepted terrorist ethic, if there were, then it wouldn’t really be ‘terrorism’, it would be something else.

“Like what” Woody had asked?  He and Bill, for the time being, seemingly engaged in a somewhat too serious albeit hypothetical soliloquy.  Bill’s vocabulary was a bit too sophisticated for a lot of people but you get used to it after a few decades.

“We’d need to invent a new term I guess” Bill had replied, “but first we’d need to carefully consider what applicable parameters could maximize effectiveness while minimizing harm to the innocent, and in the context of the kind of class-based abuse that we have, determining who is innocent is a fundamental problem.” 

“Suppose”, he’d continued “a financier manipulates the law to cheat a million people of their retirement savings but because he then has so much money, he buys protection, not only from prosecution or even civil legal claims, but buys enough security to assure his personal welfare can’t be threatened.  Then suppose a victim, in order to exact some kind of compensation, kills the man’s brother; an innocent person who did not benefit directly from the financier’s wrongdoing.  Does that involve terrorism?  Does that involve justice?  Or suppose the victims hire someone to bomb a facility owned by the financier, one undoubtedly insured, and a number of employees and customers are injured there.  Does that involve terrorism?  Does that involve justice?  Probably not, in either case.  But what else can victims do?  How can they make the costs of wrongful conduct so high that despite the unwillingness of the state to see justice done, such conduct will be made too risky?”

“That’s the million dollar question” Chuck chimed in (so he wasn’t asleep after all).  Woody poked him, laughing. “Remember when questions were cheaper?  Groucho Marx and the $64,000 question?”

“You mean Karl Marx don’t you” grumbled Frank.  Frank was a completely honest guy but a dyed in the wool Republican for whom the state could do no wrong.

Bill glanced at his friends, worried that perhaps he was being a bit too open.  They’d all studied political science together decades before but the others had wandered into different fields.  He had too but after his divorce he’d returned to academia and a very different world view.  Still, while they frequently disagreed, there was a lot of respect shared so he opened up.  “Cute, guys, if only this wasn’t so serious.  Desperate people take desperate actions, and way too much of the world is full of desperate people.  A bit of ethical guidance could save a lot of lives.

“Ethics?  Terrorist ethics, you’ve got to be kidding” chided Frank.

“Well financiers’ ethics sure aren’t about to make a surprise appearance” responded Bill.  “The fact is, an analogy to ethical and legal norms involving the concept of self-defense might alleviate the collateral damage.  Maybe there is a basis for resort to violence that can at least be tied to standards so that suffering by the innocent can be minimized, but it’s a tough call.  One argument I’ve heard involves concentric zones of responsibility-benefit with the victimizers in the middle, kind of like bulls’ eyes, and the purely innocent on the outside.

Huh (from several of the people present)?

“Well” answered Bill, the innermost circle has those most directly responsible with each next circle including a proximate prioritization of blame or responsibility. It’s a nexus based chain.  Let me give you an example.  The person responsible is in the central circle, following circles might include that person’s accomplices, then that person’s guards, then people who benefit directly from that persons improper actions, then persons who benefit indirectly.  After a series of circles like that you arrive at the mass of people who have no links.  Only action involving the latter would be pure terrorism while only action against the person responsible would be fully justified.  As one gets further away from the center, justification decreases while the label of terrorism becomes more apt.  Of course, defining who merits occupying the center is the rub.

Woody thought for a bit and then asked, “Well; how does that affect tax payers?  Many of us support activities that might be considered culpable while others don’t, but we all have to pay them.

Bill seemed prepared for the question and replied fairly quickly “The problem there involves the ability to implement the ethical paradigm.  How to tell which taxpayers are more blameworthy and which are more innocent, and even harder, how to act separately in such a general context.  Obviously the supporters of the policies that are blameworthy are less innocent than the opponents, but the group is too homogenous to differentiate.”

“Tom, you’re the lawyer” said Chuck.  “I know law and ethics have all too little in common, but what do you think of Bill’s observations?”

Tom kind of grinned.  “That depends on whether he can pay the legal fees.  I’m pretty sure he’ll be needing a lawyer, soon.”

“Fuck all of you” shouted Frank, apparently a bit more buzzed than the rest.  “And God bless America.”

Realizing he may have talked a bit more openly than was healthy in the current climate, Bill glanced at his watch and exclaimed “Where the Hell has the time gone, we need to do this again sometime but as for me, I’m out ‘a here.”

Most of the others agreed, called for their tabs and got up, all except for Frank and Tom, who decided they needed to talk a bit more.

“Shit” Bill whispered to Woody as he left, “I forgot just what Frank has been doing during the past few years”.

“You can’t be serious Bill” Woody whispered back.

“Then why are we whispering” observed Bill?  “Why are we whispering?”
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2012; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.