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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   17158 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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For obvious reasons "well I needed to break the law to achieve the greater good" is a massive slippery slope. I have an easier time believing that the claim is genuine if the person making it is willing to face the music afterwards, and it puts some sandpaper on the slide, too.

If it is the right thing to do there should be no music to face. "You can be a vigilante as long as you're willing to be punished by the very state which made your vigilante actions advisable in the first place" is just a long winded way of saying "You can't be a vigilante".

"You can't be a vigilante."

Well...yeah. You're not supposed to be a vigilante. If you're allowed to do that stuff you're definitionally not a vigilante.

not supposed

That heavily depends on who's doing the supposing, and why.

For instance, I lend zero credence to people who "not suppose" me when they're under conditions of extreme moral hazard, like how I'm "not supposed" to defend myself if the criminal attacking me is a particular color.

I am not familiar with any such laws, certainly not in any jurisdiction I am likely to be in. If I were to be punished for such an act by the state, it is true that I should not be punished, because my action would be both morally and legally permissible.

I do agree with criticisms about laws restricting the right to self defense full stop (never seen any that condition it on the color of the attacker) but I don't think self-defense is the same as vigilante justice, and conflating the two does the former harm. In fact, people opposed to self-defense frequently conflate the two, arguing that someone injured or killed while doing an unlawful activity did not deserve the criminal penalty of death. But that point is moot: they were not (generally speaking) harmed because the person defending themselves decided to act as judge, jury, and executioner, but because the person acting in self-defense was taking steps deemed necessary to self-preservation.

I am not familiar with any such laws, certainly not in any jurisdiction I am likely to be in.

Because they are usually de facto laws created by selective enforcement, not de jure. See the prosecutor in the Kyle Rittenhouse case straight up saying he would not have prosecuted any of the rioters if they had managed to kill Kyle.

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