Friday, December 26, 2008

A Free-Market Solution

Private Assassins Target Gangs In Guatemala...

In Guatemala, people have had enough of corrupt police and brutal extortions by gangs. They've turned to vigilantism. Lynch mobs and death squads are now commonplace. [More]
The shape of things to come...? Is there a lesson here about what naturally occurs when otherwise peaceable people are not allowed to live their lives, have no means of peaceable redress, and some undefined line in the sand is finally crossed?

[Via Greg L]

4 comments:

  1. "And Shepherds we shall be

    For thee, my Lord, for thee.

    Power hath descended forth from Thy hand

    Our feet may swiftly carry out Thy commands.

    So we shall flow a river forth to Thee

    And teeming with souls shall it ever be.

    In Nomeni Patri Et Fili Spiritus Sancti."

    From the Boondock Saints - Vigilantism at its best.

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  2. I don't know if the folks in the US will ever get to that point. Or should I say it like this. As long as government as we know it is around we will not see vigilantism because the parasites in the government need criminals to make a living off of. No matter how many decent folks in the US become victims of violent criminals in the revolving doors of the shameful scam of the criminal justice system. The government will hunt down with more vigor vigilantes who took matters in their own hands to stop violent criminals. Than they (government parasites) would going after the violent criminals who attack injure and kill nonviolent and peaceful productive citizens. The criminal is the parasites paycheck, don't mess with it.
    What happens in Guatemala stays in Guatemala, if you get my drift.

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  3. Guess we'll have to resort to rifles with frangible or sabot projectiles.

    No rifling for forensics to analyze.

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  4. I think AvgJoe makes a very good point. It's not a mindset that many of us were taught - but nor is it a new notion. I'm reminded of a paragraph from an essay written over 150 years ago:

    "Nay, indeed, have we not seen that government is essentially immoral? Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing about it all the marks of its parentage? Does it not exist because crime exists? Is it not strong - or, as we say, despotic - when crime is great? Is there not more liberty - that is, less government - when crime diminishes? And must not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of objects on which to perform its function? Not only does magisterial power exist because of evil, but it exists by evil. Violence is employed to maintain it, and all violence involves criminality. Soldiers, policemen, and jailers; swords, batons, and fetters are instruments for inflicting pain; and all inflection of pain is in the abstract wrong. The state employs evil weapons to subjugate evil and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals and the means by which it works. Morality cannot recognize it, for morality, being simply a statement of the perfect law, can give no countenance to anything growing out of, and living by, breaches of that law. Wherefore, legislative authority can never be ethical - must always be conventional merely."
    Herbert Spencer
    The Right to Ignore the State

    It seems to me that Mr. Spencer doesn't address the violence inherent in the right of self-defense in his blanket statement that "all violence involves criminality" - but he certainly points out the nexus of State and criminality.

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