Unkind to the victims
Bookworm on Mar 12 2008 at 5:25 pm | Filed under: Crime and punishment
Dennis Prager often states that being kind to violent criminals almost inevitably means being unkind to their future victims. Now, I don’t know whether the two men whose criminal records are described below walked off lightly because of liberal criminal policies or the overload of the criminal justice system, but they certainly had bad records and they were out and about:
State records indicate both suspects are on parole. Lovett was given a suspended sentence in January for misdemeanor larceny and breaking and entering. Atwater was convicted of felony breaking and entering in 2005 and illegal possession of a firearm in 2007. He also received a suspended sentence.
Goodness me! I forgot to tell you what these fine citizens did while on parole, didn’t I? Remember the stories last week about Eve Carson, the beloved UNC student who was mourned by thousands of her classmates after she was found shot to death with her bullet-riddled body abandoned on the street? I remember those stories, because they made me cry. Anyway, these fine men are almost certainly responsible for her death, as evidenced by the fact that they were driving her car and trying to use her ATM card right after her execution.
When we are kind to the criminals we are unkind to their victims. I believe that people can be redeemed, although that redemption tends to be limited to those who commit stupid or immature crimes, not those who show themselves quite early to be set upon an evil, violent, sociopathic path that has no consideration for others. As to those last-mentioned people, I also believe that there are wolves among us and that they have to be segregated from the population unless we’re pretty damn sure about their redemption.
Related posts:
- Remembering the victims
- Victims and heroes
- Children as victims and perpetrators in totalitarian regimes
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4 Responses to “Unkind to the victims”
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Redemption only comes after you have been hammered to shit, pardon my language, for your actions. And on top of that, I have several psychological conditioning methods to seal the deal on Redemption, after the physical part.
I support the 2nd Amendment and the training of civilian men, women, and children in the tools of violence because I believe society is more healthy if the victims of the crime can decide whether such a criminal deserves to live, before the justice system gets their hands on them.
Our courts are being clogged because government and police have kept the civilian population as little more than sheep to the slaughter. Obviously when you have a higher population of prey, sheep, you get more predators, wolves. That is one of the Laws of Nature, and no mortal human can change it.
Prosecutors are overzealous and appeal for DP against those that don’t deserve, prosecute people that are innocent like Spitzer, and essentially corrupts the justice system with their petty ambitions. Defense lawyers suffer from similar problems, which is pretty much exemplified in the American Lawyer, Ramsey Clark, that went to defend Saddam, pro bono.
As the Founding Fathers already recognized, if the community catches a criminal then a jury, of that community, gets to decide their punishment. How much more justice would be accomplished if the targets of victim are not victimized by it because the “victims” had more power in violence than the criminals? Prejudice and panic massacres occur because people are afraid, afraid of dying and afraid of the other guy. Training people in the use of violence will ensure that they react very calmly to attacks and to the criminals that attack them. In many instances, if no serious injury was ever attempted or inflicted, the civilian target will help the unconscious or mangled criminal out to a hospital. Calling a Medevac for your enemies after you have almost dismembered them is an American tradition. And it should stay one too.
A criminal takes his own life into his hands, free of the protections of society, when he seeks to target a man, a woman, or a child. Society has better things to do than to extend protections against its enemies.
I don’t know, Y. That comes remarkably close to espousing vigilante justice, which is (in my mind) defined by the fact that it denies criminals their due process rights guaranteed under the law. I don’t believe in giving convicted criminals greater rights than those found in the law, or extending to them a sympathy denied to their victims, but I do believe in the rule of law.
That comes remarkably close to espousing vigilante justice, which is (in my mind) defined by the fact that it denies criminals their due process rights guaranteed under the law.
The interesting thing about due process is that the Constitution worried about it because it effectively prevented the government from removing the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (which execution or jail takes away) from an individual without due process, without a process of justice that ensures somebody ain’t just using their power or the system for personal advantage.
It does not limit what citizens can do as a personal choice. What does limit citizens is the law. Thus the conflict occurs when the law says that citizens can’t protect themselves while at the same time ensuring that criminals enjoy more liberties and due process than their victims, which is de fact AND de jure what is going on in Britain and France.
Either the people under threat are capable of making ethical decisions for themselves, as the Founding Fathers more or less believed, or we need a police state to ensure that they do what they are told to, Book. On the bridge between these philosophical views, it is very hard to sit in the middle.
When people say vigilantes, what they are really worried about is the secret police. A bunch of enforcers in white or black hoods going out and killing whomever they please, according to some private goal or organization.
People killing burglars, robbers, etc on their property are sometimes seen as justified, legally and ethically so. Why then are so many burglars alive then, why do so many individuals, after having shot a burglar, then just hold him for the police? Because people have no particular reason to become the secret police, Book. They are just worried about their families. It is not the people themselves that want to become “vigilantes”, it is the system of law that can force them into it by giving them no better choice than to take the law into their own hands.
The dividing line is simple. Every individual is charged with the moral responsibility of doing what they think is right and taking the consequences thereof. The law system should not go out of their way to extend protections to criminals, when the law system cannot even protect the citizens from the criminals or the criminals from the more hardcore criminals. The law system, in this vein, is an ineffective and corrupt central planning reserve that is never going to be as effective as single individual Americans making the choice of life and death over those that violate their rights to life, liberty, property, etc.
I no more advocate that one must kill criminals in one’s home than I advocate that one must use a shotgun over a handgun to defend their home. Such is a matter of personal choice. I only make the point that society would become much safer, healthier, and better if the citizens themselves took the duty upon themselves to get rid of dangerous elements of society should such citizens become in contact with those elements. Flight 93 is the perfect example of this, Book. Were such folks vigilantes because they violated the recommended policy about cooperating with hijackers and could legally be held to account for the destruction of property and life through their negligent actions? It would be unreasonable to demand of a man or a woman that they risk legal consequences by going out and becoming a “vigilante”, secretly searching out crooks and criminals to execute. We must recognize that the loyalty of any person is to his family, friends, tribe, nation, in that order. Which means that a person has not only a duty to defend his family, but also a duty to defend his tribe and nation against the future actions of the criminals they happen to become targets of.
It should be a matter that the law gives them the power to consider. It would require no more or less than internal investigations in the correct use of police power, in order to keep in check. The simple answer to “who guards the guardians” is “those that the guardians guard”.