Vigilante Justice

[Ed Normile]

I do believe the very definition of vigilante is one who takes the law into his own hands. Lets say I feel my neighbor has dumped trash on my property and I take the trash and throw it on his property, I have served up a form of vigilante justice. Though unless I have seen him do the dumping how can I be sure he was actually the one who dumped the trash, and if I did see it, would I not be better off to call him politely and say Sternhauser why did you dump your trash in my yard, pick it up before I call Nihil and he arrests you for littering. This of course being if Stern was my neighbor and Nihil was the law of the area.

Most cases of vigilantism are indeed carried out by groups of people who have gathered to right some perceived wrong, usually the crowd mentality is not the best for any situation, just look at how people react during any crisis, alone there are those who do the right thing, but when normalcy disintegrates raw emotions and greed usually leads the charge. This is why people who have lost everything in a natural disaster will often steal things like new TV's and stereo systems, even though their most urgent needs are food and water. Any group who has somehow gathered to punish a wrong do-er is led by emotion only, they forget the rights of due process and subject their targets to abuse as they see fit.

How would you like to be accused of a crime, say Slappo was seen in the area taking pictures of kids at a playground for an article he is writing for a catholic publication dealing with fun summer activities for children and one of these kids come up missing. Then someone thinks, I seen this young guy taking pics of these kids and I remember he is a catholic and you know about all them scandals in their church, maybe he was abused and as statistics prove abuse victims grow up to be abusers. This gets around and about 15 guys and 11 women from the area decide lets get Slappo and turn him over to the police, undoubtedly there will be one or two that says maybe we can get out of him where he has the child, so they beat him up a little, and Slappo says I did not do it, so they beat him a little more. Eventually they turn over the barely breathing battered body of slappo to the local authorities only to find out the kid was found several hours ago playing x-box with her friend and forgot to tell her parents. Poor Slappo will never take pictures again as the nerve damage to his body makes the shaking in his arms to much to hold a camera. This is a tragedy, save Slappo by realizing that vigilante justice is just immoral and wrong with no place in any modern society.

ed

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Ed Normile' date='09 July 2010 - 04:42 PM' timestamp='1278711760' post='2140121']
I do believe the very definition of vigilante is one who takes the law into his own hands. Lets say I feel my neighbor has dumped trash on my property and I take the trash and throw it on his property, I have served up a form of vigilante justice. Though unless I have seen him do the dumping how can I be sure he was actually the one who dumped the trash, and if I did see it, would I not be better off to call him politely and say Sternhauser why did you dump your trash in my yard, pick it up before I call Nihil and he arrests you for littering. This of course being if Stern was my neighbor and Nihil was the law of the area.

Most cases of vigilantism are indeed carried out by groups of people who have gathered to right some perceived wrong, usually the crowd mentality is not the best for any situation, just look at how people react during any crisis, alone there are those who do the right thing, but when normalcy disintegrates raw emotions and greed usually leads the charge. This is why people who have lost everything in a natural disaster will often steal things like new TV's and stereo systems, even though their most urgent needs are food and water. Any group who has somehow gathered to punish a wrong do-er is led by emotion only, they forget the rights of due process and subject their targets to abuse as they see fit.

How would you like to be accused of a crime, say Slappo was seen in the area taking pictures of kids at a playground for an article he is writing for a catholic publication dealing with fun summer activities for children and one of these kids come up missing. Then someone thinks, I seen this young guy taking pics of these kids and I remember he is a catholic and you know about all them scandals in their church, maybe he was abused and as statistics prove abuse victims grow up to be abusers. This gets around and about 15 guys and 11 women from the area decide lets get Slappo and turn him over to the police, undoubtedly there will be one or two that says maybe we can get out of him where he has the child, so they beat him up a little, and Slappo says I did not do it, so they beat him a little more. Eventually they turn over the barely breathing battered body of slappo to the local authorities only to find out the kid was found several hours ago playing x-box with her friend and forgot to tell her parents. Poor Slappo will never take pictures again as the nerve damage to his body makes the shaking in his arms to much to hold a camera. This is a tragedy, save Slappo by realizing that vigilante justice is just immoral and wrong with no place in any modern society.

ed
[/quote]
Poor Slappo. Poor guy never saw it coming.


All I know is that I'm smart enough not to try to arrest Sternhauser.

[Ed Normile]

Oh and another thing, one defending ones self is in no way vigilante justice. When you are defending your self you are not the aggressor, you are the defender, you are taking the steps neccessary to protect yourslef, not judging a wrong and deciding what needs to be done and then pursuing an action towards an alledged wrong do-er.

ed

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Ed Normile' date='09 July 2010 - 04:51 PM' timestamp='1278712267' post='2140130']
Oh and another thing, one defending ones self is in no way vigilante justice. When you are defending your self you are not the aggressor, you are the defender, you are taking the steps neccessary to protect yourslef, not judging a wrong and deciding what needs to be done and then pursuing an action towards an alledged wrong do-er.

ed
[/quote]
All I wanted to get at is that the term vigilante justice is poorly defined. I went so far as to call it a loaded term. I think it's too general, and carries too many negative connotations, to be of any use in this poll.

[Sojourner]

See, I would argue that self-defense and removing your neighbor's trash from your yard and putting it in his are not vigilante justice, but rather are within the scope of the law -- protecting self, property, and others from imminent harm or danger. Use of deadly force is typically allowed in castle doctrine laws, and I'm pretty sure that case law supports using less-than-deadly force to prevent unjustified shooting of another person or their animal. I wouldn't say that's vigilante.

It's more, in my opinion, than simply taking the law into your own hands. It's taking power that's not ceded to you into your own hands. We have the right to protect self, property, and others from imminent threat (with varying degrees of force permissible).

The line is fuzzy, though, I'll admit, when it comes to defining "imminent threat."

[Ed Normile]

The term used her was vigilante justice which basically means lawlessness.
I had to cut and paste this from the Legal Dictionary as after three attempts the link would not work.

[b][size="3"]vigilante[/size][/b] n. someone who takes the law into his/her own hands by trying and/or punishing another person without any legal authority. In the 1800s groups of vigilantes dispensed "frontier justice" by holding trials of accused horse-thieves, rustlers and shooters, and then promptly hanging the accused if "convicted." A mother who shoots the alleged molester of her child is a vigilante.

ed

Edited July 9, 2010 by Ed Normile

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Socrates' date='09 July 2010 - 01:23 PM' timestamp='1278699822' post='2139972']
I think in [i]The Dark Knight[/i], Batman is shown as walking the line between hero and anti-hero, rather than always being a paragon of morality.[/quote]
In modern society, nobody is seen as a paragon of morality. Who wants a paragon of morality? A paragon is like, a [i]model [/i]of [i]behavior[/i], man. A [i]model [/i]implies that totally ungroovy word "ought," and applies it to our personal conduct. Total buzzkill, man. That's not acceptable for modern man. We each get to live in whatever way[i] feels[/i] best, you reach?


[quote]A reviewer noted how in [i]The Dark Knight[/i], whenever Batman "tortures" a bad guy to get information (such as the Joker and Maroni), it never leads to success on his part. After being beaten, the Joker gives Batman false information, and Rachael is killed while Harvey Dent is disfigured and ultimately corrupted.
In the interrogation scene (which incidentally Chris Nolan has said is his favorite), Batman is shown as a man losing control, while his rough methods prove frustratingly ineffective against the Joker, who takes masochistic delight in his beatings, and gleefully predicts that he will make Batman "break his one rule" (kill him).[/quote]
Do you really think that is the message, the [i]value[/i], that Joe Average is taking away from this movie?


[quote]That said, I honestly don't think it's necessarily wrong to rough up or frighten murderous criminals or terrorists to help save lives, much as that is an unpopular opinion on here.[/quote]
What is the difference between "roughing up/causing discomfort/instilling fear" and attempting to coerce the will? If you ain't convincing through logic, you're coercing through force. Seems simple. I like simple. God is simple.


[quote]There's something wrong with a line of thought that places a higher premium on the comfort of murderers than on innocent lives. I think it's because much of our society essentially worships comfort anyway. A lot of people who are full of self-righteous horror at terrorists being caused discomfort or fear, see little horror in the murder of millions of the innocent unborn (or at best view the two as equivalent evils).[/quote]
There's something wrong with a line of thought that places a higher premium on physical benefits than moral conduct.


[quote]And incidentally, Stern, wouldn't [i]all[/i] justice be vigilante justice in your anarchist utopia?
(You might want to check out Frank Miller's classic 80s Batman work - it had some anarchist undertones.)
[/quote]
I haven't got an anarchist utopia. Never said such a thing would or could exist. Justice is every man rendering to each his due. Its pure form comes from every man rendering to each his due. True and pure justice doesn't require violence. Unfortunately, pure justice cannot be wrought through violence by sinful man. The best we can manage to do is to restore, physically and in part, the physical order that men have already messed up through [i]in[/i]justice. God is the only one who can properly judge what is "due" in recompense for a sin. Rational men can pretty fairly judge if a person is a threat to other people, or that a material thing that has been unjustly taken should be returned. Irrational men think that an artificial violent monopoly on certain types of violence should be given to a select group of average men, [i]by [/i]average men, and believe that the result will usually be "justice," as though such men would be more wise, holy and virtuous than Joe Average, and have some physical incentive to be more just than Joe Average. Irrational men think the wrath of men works the justice of God.

~Sternhauser

Edited July 10, 2010 by Sternhauser

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' date='09 July 2010 - 04:44 PM' timestamp='1278711885' post='2140123']
All I know is that I'm smart enough not to try to arrest Sternhauser.
[/quote]

I'm a pussycat.

~Sternhauser

[Winchester]

[quote name='Sternhauser' date='09 July 2010 - 08:58 PM' timestamp='1278723498' post='2140233']
I haven't got an anarchist utopia. Never said such a thing would or could exist. [/quote]
Indeed.
[quote name='Sternhauser' date='09 July 1988 - 04:58 PM' timestamp='1278723498' post='2140233']
We could have an anarchist utopia, if you butthats would shut up and listen to me.[/quote]

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Winchester' date='09 July 2010 - 08:24 PM' timestamp='1278725068' post='2140274']
Indeed.

[/quote]

You were right about my having an axe to grind. Many axes, as a matter of fact. Nothing worse than a dull axe. It doesn't get anything done. Axes need to be sharpened.

~Sternhauser

Edited July 10, 2010 by Sternhauser

[Winchester]

Too sharp an axe is a problem. Dull axes work great.

[Jesus_lol]

[quote name='Winchester' date='09 July 2010 - 08:15 PM' timestamp='1278731747' post='2140367']
Too sharp an axe is a problem. Dull axes work great.
[/quote]

in fact the best splitting axes are dull.

so a truly dull man is what is needed to split society apart into anarchy. cant think of any who fit the description though...

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='Sternhauser' date='09 July 2010 - 10:34 PM' timestamp='1278725675' post='2140285']
You were right about my having an axe to grind. Many axes, as a matter of fact. Nothing worse than a dull axe. It doesn't get anything done. Axes need to be sharpened.

~Sternhauser
[/quote]

I perfer a sword.


[img]http://www.vikingwholesale.com/catalog/images/C-900S_SWORD.jpg[/img]

[Winchester]

I prefer a Specter gunship.

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Winchester' date='09 July 2010 - 10:15 PM' timestamp='1278731747' post='2140367']
Too sharp an axe is a problem. Dull axes work great.
[/quote]

A dull axe is a maul.


~Sternhauser