I have carefully read and considered Representative Jane Harman's HR 1955 --
VIOLENT RADICALIZATION AND HOMEGROWN TERRORISM PREVENTION
ACT OF 2007. I've also read forums where people have logged their comments
about the bill. Here are some random thoughts of mine.
The defenders of the bill are right--it does not "criminalize" anything, and in opposing it
we need to be careful not to suggest that it does. Its great harm is not in any legal
penalties that its provisions include. No, its danger is the Joe McCarthy possibilities
of the Commission it creates,
*with the power of hearings--and therefore of subpoena, a power that is expressly
authorized for even a single member of the commission--little Joe McCarthy's
running around the country holding their own private hearings;
*with the power implied in the effect of the report that it is obligated to issue;
*in the danger inherent in the legislative that it is called upon to propose;
* in the insidious means of operation that the bill proposes for the commission:
the infiltration of targeted organizations;
* in the hiring of consultants and contractors to carry out its work;
* and in the creation of the misnamed "Center of Excellence" which will continue
to exist after the Commission is disbanded.
The following items are simply listed in the order of their appearance as I went
through the lengthy bill. It is clearly a "thought police" bill since in Sec. 899A (2) it refers
to "violent radicalization" as "promoting an extremist belief system." Now, it is true that
the sentence in which that occurs places that belief system in the context of "facilitating
ideologically based violence to advance...change." But there is a long history of
government interpretation of "belief systems" as by their nature leading to violence
as a means of promoting change. We have only to look at the use of the criminal
syndicalism law in California from 1919 to the mid-1930's, and efforts to use it
again in the 1960's--when the court declared it unconstitutional. The point is that
the government argued that by definition certain groups were violent and therefore
membership in them, regardless of whether or not a particular individual had
engaged in violence, was enough to convict one of the crime of advocating the
violent overthrow of the government under the syndicalist act.
Ralph E. Shaffer/Professor Emeritus, history/Cal Poly Pomona
For bill's text, see: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1955