Moderation in response to provocation is no vice.

• Author: Higgs, Robert
• Position: Etceteras ... - Column

As I write, the news and social media are flush with commentary on recent riots at the University of California at Berkeley and in the surrounding area of the city. The rioters purport to be anarchists, although their actions mark them more as heedless vandals, and insofar as one may discern their underlying ideology, it seems to be much more communism than anarchism. My concern here, however, is not the nature or actions of this group, but the tremendous amount of publicity its actions generated. A modest investment in public mischief, it appears, can have a huge payoff in public notice.

In a world of continuous news coverage and instant, worldwide communication of reports, perhaps such an imbalance is to be expected. After all, the news media and various interest groups are hungry for readers and viewers, and truly important news is not continually breaking. In its absence, reports of threats and conflicts, especially violent ones, may serve the media's needs well enough.

We would do well to understand, however, that many individuals and groups whose troublemaking gains public attention are inconsequential in their ability to sway the powers that be and the policies that those powers make and enforce. The Berkeley rioters, like many other such actors, cannot hope for anything more than gaining the public's attention. If they do so, they have succeeded.

If their actions prompt some kind of public or--much better--official reaction, especially a violent repressive reaction, they have succeeded even more. Many impotent groups thrive on repression, which serves to validate their opposition to allegedly oppressive rulers, rules, or even cultures.

Terrorists are the best example. Rarely do individual terrorists or terrorist groups possess significant resources to alter the regimes or policies against which their actions are directed. So, as a rule, the terrorists' immediate aim is simply to terrorize, to strike great fear in the multitude. If the government then responds with extensive measures ostensibly to suppress or destroy the terrorists, the terrorists have succeeded even more. (Note well: terrorism is a tactic, not an actor, and as such it can be carried out in some fashion by practically any determined adult. Hence, it is impossible to win a war on terrorism as such in any coherent sense.) Ponder, for example, the many billions of dollars in costs the American people have borne and the liberties of which they have been deprived by the...