Mises Wire

WSJ: Lack of Civil Liberties Breeds Terrorism

WSJ: Lack of Civil Liberties Breeds Terrorism

An article in today's Wall Street Journal quotes a Princeton economist discussing the causes of terrorism: "There is no evidence of a general tendency for impoverished or uneducated people to be more likely to support terrorism or join terrorist organizations than their higher-income, better-educated countrymen," he said. The Sept. 11 attackers were relatively well-off men from a rich country, Saudi Arabia. "When nonviolent means of protest are curtailed," he says, "malcontents appear to be more likely to turn to terrorist tactics."

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