@Tivolier - Terrific. They aren't terrorists because you don't fear them. Wonderful. We can all relax now.
How naive can you be? We don't live in a police state. Talk to someone who lived in East Germany or in Russia during the Cold War if you want to know what a police state is. If this country has drifted to the right too far for your tastes, then support the left and change it. That is the beauty of this form of government that a police state can never support (it wouldn't do you any harm to read some political science texts to learn a little more about government along the way - for someone who espouses to be so into the politics of the situation you show a strong lack of understanding about it).
These terrorists are not fighting for my rights as a citizen, or as a person. My desires and needs are not of any concern of these groups. In fact, they don't even live here, if their posts are any indication. They aren't, as one poster suggests, equivalent to the founding fathers because they are imposing their will from the outside, not from within the population of people involved, and because they were very public about who they were and what the cause was. These crackers are neither public, nor are they operating with a public mandate for change within the society.
This is NOT civil disobedience. Civil disobedience requires two things: It cannot harm third party bystanders, and the perpetrators must be willing to accept the consequences of their actions. Go back to the late sixties to see all kinds of civil disobedience in action. Even the sit-ins of the day were effective - the people involved were willing to be arrested for their actions. In fact, a principal tenet of the concept is that they must EXPECT to be arrested, and to do so in a way that doesn't harm the officers arresting them. They break the law and go to jail to make the point. And that is the point - to raise public awareness of the injustice.
What these guys are doing is not civil disobedience. They don't care who they harm. They said it themselves. They whimper that they are being investigated (I suppose) by the police, so they unleash their fury and say that the police and those that work with them are getting a taste of their own medicine. What a crock. No one is gunning for them, no policeman will ever shoot to kill them because of some perceived wrong. That is an entirely possible outcome of their actions for the policemen and their informants, however. One might suggest that their actions are equivalent to putting an add online for someone to kill your spouse - an action that IS a criminal act. In any event, once again, we see a group of naive thugs who want to blow up the Interstate because they got a speeding ticket. And they have no sympathy for the drivers on the road at the time. Which means they have no sympathy for you or me. This isn't a struggle for human rights or liberties. This is thuggery.
What these guys are doing is not civil disobedience. They are not willing to go to jail for their actions, in fact they hide behind silly code names so that no one will know who they are in real life. Even Osama bin Laden didn't use a code name. Their purpose is to bring down governments, not raise public awareness of injustice so that the people will change the government for the better. And they do it in a completely hidden way, using any means they can to avoid public exposure. And who, exactly, are the cowards?
I am a bleeding heart liberal, and I don't like where the right wing end of the political system has gone any more than you do. You may feel that government is out of control. But if you live long enough, as I have, you will see amazing changes (some good, some bad) in the way this country runs. You can be a part of that change and work from within to fix the things you think are bad, or you can sit back and let it happen, but you don't have the right to destroy the system to change it. Go read Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" or even the Wikipedia entry on the subject.
And get off the "I am doing this for you" kick. You, or they, if you are not involved, are not doing this for me, my country, or the world. They are doing it because they don't like that someone has any form of control over them. They are anarchists. This isn't about humanity, it is about their own petty, individual bloodlust. Are you not a sheople (sherson? sheeperson?) for following them?
