John,
You just described the United States. But though we have all of these "classic symptoms" there is no real danger of insurgency. I would offer that Gurr's position is sound, but that if he would have dug a little deeper he would have gotten closer to the true roots of causation.
As we discussed, you bundle the four primary causal factors that I look to under the single umbrella of "Legitimacy." That is one of those words that carries far too many meanings, I think it is critical to break it down into four more focused bundles when assessing insurgency:
Legitimacy: The populace must recognize the right of the government to govern.
Justice: The populace must perceive that the rule of law as applied to them is just.
Respect: No significant segment of the society can perceive that they are excluded from participation in governance and opportunity as a matter of status.
Hope: The populace must perceive that they have a trusted, effective and legal means of changing governance, when they believe such change to be necessary.
When these conditions exist and hope is absent, conditions of insurgency will grow. Certainly economic hardship adds fuel to this mix, but it is a mix rooted in domestic policies and politics assesssed through the eyes of "the populace" (which is never a monolith). At point all it takes is a spark. Some internal or external leader armed with an effective ideology; or some event (as in Tunisia). Whether it then goes violent or non-violent is a choice of tactics, with little bearing on the nature of the problem.
Hope is codified and preserved in our Constitution. This is the role of a Constitution. Any constitution that creates such hope in a populace is the kind of effective COIN tool our founding fathers intended and designed our own constitution to be.
Cheers!
Bob
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