Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Well aware. So the "so what" is that giving "legal" status creates the condition where your own branches and representatives in government can effectively work against each other. - thus an example of how not to do it!

So assigning legal status is not actually good a policy as it makes the implementation of strategy far more difficult. Assuming most folks know this, how much further along are we?

It depends. In a democracy the assumption is that once the vote of yea or nay happens everyone will support the side that wins. The way it actually works, as you point out, is one side will try to exploit political advantage with the intent to create a policy failure which will allow a political advantage during the next election for their own party. So the nation suffers as a whole.

Which leads me to point two, if the violent act is committed by a non state actor(s) it may be best to treat it as a Law Enforcement problem as opposed to a lets invade every country and turn them into a democracy problem.