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The return of MPs to the Hill this week seems to have signalled the beginning of a very long informal election campaign. It seems likely that Canada’s response to terrorism will be an issue in that campaign. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and several of his most trusted ministers, such as Jason Kenney, have strong feelings about how we should treat Canadians accused of terrorism, and how we can best fight it overseas. And world events seem likely, unfortunately, to keep terrorism on all our minds.

Harper’s speech on Monday included a line that attempted to draw a clear ideological line between the Conservatives and their rivals. “We know (terrorists’) ideology is not the result of ‘social exclusion’ or other so-called ‘root causes.’ It is evil, vile and must be unambiguously opposed.”

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Conservatives like to use “root causes” as code for naive and simplistic attempts to excuse terrorism as the inevitable result of poverty or some other social factor. But the trouble with speaking in code is that eventually somebody will take you at the plain meaning of your words. As all good Conservatives who read their Aquinas should know, it is nonsensical to suggest that a result can exist without a cause. Are the Conservatives really arguing that terrorism, as an expression of pure evil, just springs up without explanation, like demonic possession? That any one of us might wake up tomorrow possessed of an urge to become a terrorist for no reason whatsoever? Surely there are reasons why one person takes up arms in an evil cause and another does not. To try to understand those reasons, and reduce their effect, is not to shrug at violence. It is in fact a moral duty.