Would a vigilante be justifiable?

No…the goal is justice and to make the world a better place… not revenge… besides if you kill people then the police can’t shed light on how to stop the crimes in the first place and why they happened…. and also who determines what crimes are capital offences someone might think that Jaywalkers should be killed too…or people who don’t read the same books as you…it is a slippery slope….

Justified? Maybe.
Legal? No.
Should it be allowed? No

If you are going to take the law into your own hands, you had better be prepared to admit to your acts and accept the consequences without protest.

Totally. To hell with the pseudo-ethics of hand wringers.

If we could assume that the vigilante would never make a mistake and only kill vile humans that our justice system would execute anyways, then I’m all for it. But we can’t assume that, so it isn’t a great idea.

I love Dexter and the concept but the task is better left to TV fantasy – it’s too likely that people might be wrongfully murdered.

Like Cockswain and Simone said: It sounds like a good idea and I would have no problem with it, but it wouldn’t work flawlessly.

Killing any human is wrong.

Sorry, our legal system has some flaws, but it beats everything else that is out there in the world.

A one-man vigilante is not the answer. one man cannot be judge and jury in the taking of a life, no matter how much evidence points to one person. DNA is proving that many innocent people were convicted, in the past, of a crimes(s) that they did not do. This is why I say a vigilante cannot make their own decisions, without evidence to support or not support their beleifs.

Giving a vigilante a free hand to execute at will, would be like turning a wolf loose in a yard full of chickens. in his mind, everyone is guilty and so are the chickens.

When she was in the 6th grade, my daughter and 2 girls with her went thru an attempted rape by 5 boys. We contacted the police, and spoke with them. We talked to the school principal (this happened on the way home from school, and therefore is their responsablity). We had a metting with the parents of the girls involved, and the parents of another girl who went thru the same thing with the same boys. We talked to the parents of the lead boy.
The result was Nothing. The school did nothing. Neither did the police, or the parents of the boys. The next day my daughters arm was broken at school, by the same boys.
My daughter ended up feeling scared and unprotected at school. She ended up in a gang, and using and manufacturing and selling meth.
What I should have done is skipped the meetings, and bashed that boy’s head in with a bat.

hardcore

@filmfann I would say you would have been justified in your actions if you had bashed the boys heads in. If I was on your jury, I also likely would find you guilty of aggravated assault on said boys and send you to prison.

Like I said, sometimes it may be justified but it is never excusable.

@filmfann

What happened to your daughter totally sucks.
Were any of those aholes punished for breaking her arm?

No it is not. It is cold blooded action. This is the consequence of shows like Dexter, people actully consider doing things. It is not “just a show”.

No. I’m even against it when the government kills people, so I’d definitely be against it if Dexter/Batman/etc… did it. Our system isn’t perfect but it does have some checks/balances in place to minimize mistakes. This would be missing from vigilante justice. Not to mention the fact that this vigilante would not be accountable to the people in any way (even indirectly as police officers are).

I’m all for it. I believe there is a way to show criminals that the humane way works, but sometimes completely horrific things transpire due to no action taking place. While I don’t exactly know if a vigilante should kill, I am all for maiming and bone breaking by him (a la Batman). A vigilante serves not only as a protector, but a symbol that normal people shouldn’t have to be afriad.

Nope. I’m all about the rule of law.

Sounds much like anarchy to me.

So it’s okay for the state to kill someone, but not for citizens to do so, even in the same circumstances?

No wonder this culture is so fucked up.

@incendiary_dan – no one said that was okay either. But, there are many rights that we cede to the state.

@incendiary_dan Kinda my point. But I don’t expect someone who values the rule of law first to exactly agree with me.

@incendiary_dan – so this is a call to anarchy.

@iamthemob In a sense. And before you get all hot and bothered and go off the rail, I hope you’ve actually read about anarchism and localized collectivism.

@incendiary_dan – not bothered – it just frames the discussion a little better.

It’s funny how people attribute anarchy, I find, to an extreme right political movement. It’s neither right nor left, and both at the same time. In essence, each individual person is only responsible for themselves and subject to no control form an outside source, and the government is in control of every aspect of life, as each individual is a member of the government.

There’s a critical mass, though, where anarchy probably can’t function. As soon as there are “strangers” in a person’s life, anarchy starts to break down most likely. I think that we’re too interconnected at this point to have anything close to real anarchy.

@iamthemob True enough about the critical mass, which is why most anarchist philosophy goes beyond the individualistic sort of liberty you describe and add to it the formation of communities on local scales that come up with rules and laws of their own, rather than have them imposed by an outside government.

So when I come at the subject it’s from the point of view that the United States government, and state governments, and basically anything besides maybe town councils, as illegitimate and not serving the interest of the people.

@incendiary_dan – I’m with you except for the point about illegitimacy. The actions taken by the government may or may not be, but it seems disingenuous to claim that the government itself is illegitimate.

@incendiary_dan Not really. Take, for example, the fact that after the revolution, the U.S. was not recognized as legitimate by any foreign government. It only was able to gain any recognition by entering into treaties with sovereign American Indian nations, which it has kept basically none of. Plus, a good 80% or more of those treaties were entered into under coercion, which makes them null and void in international law. Given that, even if you were to take the stance that the U.S. government has any right to rule anything at all, 50–75% of the actual landmass of the U.S. is not U.S. territory, and is therefore illegally occupied. (Churchill, Struggles for the Land)

There’s also the simple argument that the government, perhaps all governments, rule by threat of force alone, and that because just about every country was formed by displacing or slaughtering indigenous inhabitants to take their land they are governments of occupation.

I can discuss at further lengths, but it’s getting enough off topic that I’d prefer not to here.

Haha, I just realized I accidentally addressed that to myself. Got to learn to read and edit.

@incendiary_dan “So it’s okay for the state to kill someone, but not for citizens to do so, even in the same circumstances?”

I don’t think the government should be killing people, but that doesn’t mean that the governments rights should be limited in the exact same way ours are. For example, I’m perfectly fine allowing the government to imprison people (with enough due process, etc…) but not allowing individuals to do so (at least not as a punishment).

@roundsquare Why do they get to decide that, when the vast majority of prisoners in the U.S. prison culture (which imprisons a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country, by the way) are only convicted of crimes that most Americans agree should not be jailing offenses (drugs and such, particularly marijuana) and that the biggest factor in determining that is the color of the defendant’s skin? And what legitimacy can a judicial system that is intrinsically joined to the “prison-industrial complex” have in deciding things like whether or not people go to jail? Why trust a (in-)justice system that has repeatedly killed citizens with no justification other than the wrong politics? How can you trust any government institution when they’ve proven time and again that they are on the side of industry and profit, acting basically as a legitimizing force for what corporations need to do to make profit, such as in the case of the Forestry Service allowing illegal logging? These corporations have all proven that they not only will not, but can not be compatible with freedom and justice.

A wild west type vigilante punishment scenario might not be the best thing, but trusting the government is definitely not a good thing, or a smart thing, considering history. And hey, rapists ain’t gonna shoot themselves.

@incendiary_dan Just to be clear, I wasn’t saying that our government is doing things right, but rather that in general, a central organizing body with some form of popular representation can be allowed to do things that an individual wouldn’t be allowed to do.

In addition, I agree that US incarcerations system is horribly messed up, not just with respect to discrimination but also with respect to the level of crime necessary to be jailed. This doesn’t mean that its impossible for a government to do things properly, though I can imagine some sort of critical mass argument showing that its very difficult. However, I believe its more a function of Americans being swayed by catch phrases (“tough on crime”, “weak on crime”) than anything else that causes a lot of our problems.

That being said, it seems we probably agree that pure vigilantism is not the way to go. Maybe, as you say, smaller units of organization are the way to go. This would probably allow for easier enforcement of laws/moral rules. It does fit, to some degree, with my own views of government (though I also believe in a larger scale “government’ with a limited role based purely around coordination).