Terrorists Won't Become Like Pirates

I was going to make this a comment to Ed's last post. But as I was writing it, it seemed like there was enough content to make a new post out of it. We'll see, won't we?

Terrorists won't become like pirates. They don't fit into the established Western tradition of rebel worship. This tradition goes back a long ways; certainly nearly a thousand years. Consider figures like Robin Hood, Jesse James, and Andre Agassi. We love them all! And why not? They kill people in authority, flout current standards of morality, and answer to no one. (Well, maybe that doesn't go for Agassi - I don't recall him murdering anyone. But I could be wrong. In any event, he's still a rebel.)

But bloodlust is not why we love them. Rather, it's that they represent freedom. Emily was right when she noted that most modern depictions of pirates focus on searching for buried treasure, exploration, and just general carousing. There's a part of us that wants to be able to do those things - pick up and leave whenever we want, do as we choose, do things no one has ever done before. Sail off into the sunset; ride a lone horse into the sunset; follow a jungle trail...into the sunset. (Sunsets are the key to freedom, apparently.)

But we can't. We have to raise crops, raise families, and follow most of the rules most of the time. It's called society, and it's worked for thousands of years. When society works, it's a wonderful thing. It lets us eat and live comfortably. And it allows us to do things that the cavemen never could. Science and literature, arts and industry - all the advances of mankind are because we buy into society.

There's little pieces of us that still feel like cavemen, though. And fortunately, those bits of us are largely satisfied by allowing a very few people to live that life outside the law. We secretly root for them, and we celebrate them because they let the rest of us live productive lives. If everyone were an outlaw, nothing would ever get done. But if Jesse James robs a couple dozen banks over the course of a couple decades, we can lean on our desks and say, "Man! Did you hear about that last job the James Gang pulled? Phew! Always staying one step ahead of the law, too. Alright - now what were you saying about the third quarter actuarial adjustments?"

It's a fine line, however, between outlaws and fanatics. We like the idea of a little rebelliousness out there; we don't like fanaticism. Why not? Because fanatics aren't any more free than the rest of us - they're slaves to their ideology, and that's not very romantic. This is why terrorists won't be like pirates. They're both on the fringes of society, but we're scared of the parts of us that are fanatical, whereas we are wistful about the parts of us that want freedom.

How can you tell which side of the line someone falls? I think it can all be boiled down to something I call the plush doll test. If you can imagine a historical figure or archetype as a plush doll, it's a rebel or an outlaw. If you can't, then it's a fanatic. For example: Robin Hood - plush doll. Torquemada - not a plush doll. Pirate - plush doll. Ku Klux Klansman - not a plush doll.

And here's where I disagree with Amy. I don't think that Nazis are like pirates, either. We don't celebrate Nazis as a general rule. We tend either to demonize or ridicule them. And we do this, again, because we're afraid of the dark corners of humanity that they represent. They fail the plush doll test.

Like I said, it can be a fine line. But I'm convinced that terrorists will never be like pirates.