Earlier, I posted Dr. Wolfgang Eggert’s petition against the Iraq war, but I’ve felt since then that the call to ban theocratic groups has more than a few problems with it that I should point out.

I understand the urge to do something forceful about an increasingly dangerous situation, but banning entails surveillance and surveillance is inherently expansive.

How does the government know which groups will turn out to be dangerous? It will have to monitor a much larger pool of allegedly “extremist” groups. Out of those the dangerous ones will be very few, but that won’t stop the net being cast wider and wider.

A second danger stemming from a ban is that the criteria employed are also likely to expand over time.  Theocrats and Nazis today. Conservatives and socialists tomorrow. Recent developments in Germany demonstrate this. Last month, the courts, which have already let the government deny the right of association to neo-Nazi groups, moved to uphold the government’s right to monitor certain leftist groups, with “historic” ties to the Communist party and “links” to violent extremists.

Clearly, such language is tenuous  at best and only illustrates how slippery this terrain can get both legally and morally…..

From Jurist.org (July 21, 2010).

“A German federal court on Wednesday ruled the government’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (OPC) can keep tabs on members of the socialist Left party using publicly available information. The decision overturns a ruling by a state court in North Rhine-Westphalia, which had said it was not appropriate for Germany’s intelligence agency to be gathering a file on The Left’s Thuringia state party leader Bodo Ramelow.

In its ruling the, court stated that the party has unconstitutional goals, which makes the government surveillance legitimate. The Left party has some historic ties to the former East German Communist party and has been linked to violent left-wing extremist groups. The suit challenging the surveillance was filed by Ramelow, who has indicated that he will appeal the court’s decision to the Constitutional Court.

The German government continues monitoring the rise of extremist groups and attempting to limit their influence within the country. Last November, the Constitutional Court upheld legislation prohibiting public support and justification of the Nazi regime. The ruling means that neo-Nazis are forbidden from assembling for the purposes of of approving, glorifying or justifying the Nazi regime.”