Vice: America Is Obsessed With Vigilantism
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When the state abdicates its duty to inflict retribution on behalf of victims of crime, or even to curtail criminal behavior, then vigilantism becomes inevitable.
Of course, the state will treat vigilantism as the most serious offense, worse than murder or rape, because citizens taking the law into their own hands represents an immediate existential threat to the power of the state.
When conservatives vote for anti-crime policies, it’s not about cruelly inflicting pain for no reason. It’s about preventing the destruction of the social contract and the subsequent collapse of society. The state must deter and punish criminals. If it does not, then the state is illegitimate.
I truly dread having to say this.
If justified defense of self or others from violent repeat offenders becomes a crime, then it's time for vigilantism to graduate to the next step.
Vigilantes deal with the symptoms, but at some point, the disease must be addressed. Those who preclude any possibility of treating the disease peaceably with the threat of deadly force invariably make themselves just and moral targets of the same.
Look at the way some of them responded to the rash of goofs in costumes that cropped up around 2010 or their responses to some of the 'victim solves own crime' ones.
The state has been illegitimate for a while now.