Remember that awesome Dirty Harry movie Magnum Force where Clint explains that “There’s nothing wrong with shooting, as long as the right people get shot?” Back in the day, popular culture understood such obvious truths. Today, much of our cultural elite is utterly morally illiterate. Today, a bunch of leftists – particularly rich, pampered ones – seem to be positively turgid at the notion of shooting their designated enemies. Even commies love their traditions. I probably don’t have to explain it to you, but no, it’s not OK to shoot somebody because he’s a healthcare insurance executive and you don’t like healthcare insurance companies. But, on the other hand, there are several categories of people it’s OK to shoot or otherwise risk harming. All violence is not the same.
Dumb but earnest people will tell you that violence is never the answer when, in fact, violence is not only the answer in a few situations but the ultimate answer to the question of how human beings relate to each other. Sorry if that freaks you out. Your matriarchal public middle school may have had a rule that both kids who get in a fight, whether they started or are defending themselves, get suspended, but this is an indulgence only possible in a society that is secure enough – through the threat of massive violence – to be this naive. We’ve been completely misled about the proper role of violence, and violence does have a role. Violence has a foundational role. All human civilization is based on violence. Do you imagine the Europeans conquered North America with hugs and land acknowledgments? No, they conquered it with hatchets and rifles and left a big pile of bodies. The people they conquered it from had spent thousands of years killing each other, so when they came up against the settlers, they knew how to wage war. Of course, the Europeans knew something about war, too. The Europeans were better at it, more technologically advanced, and – eventually – employed better tactics. No violence, no United States of America. The bottom line is every civilization around the world is built on bones.
Too bad if that makes you sad. The facts are the facts. Human beings have always fought and will always fight. We can talk out most of our differences, and we should, but at the end of the day, the guy with the most guns decides what’s going to happen.
Violence maintains our society. It is the glue that holds everything together. It’s the glue that holds every society together. Every society has laws, and the law is always somebody with a gun that enforces the law. That’s one reason why you should be very careful about the laws you enact. A law requires somebody with a gun to enforce it. Remember that dumb law about not being able to buy single cigarettes? And remember that guy who tried to sell one and the cops tried to arrest him and, in the process, accidentally killed him? That arrest you make, whether it’s for a loosey or a child murderer, could end up with somebody maimed or killed. A routine fistfight can too. There are lots of people doing years in the slammer because they got in a brawl, punched somebody, and the guy fell and broke his skull and died, and voilà – second-degree murder or manslaughter.
But the risk that the necessary violence gets out of control is one we accept as a society when attempting to stop criminals from breaking the law. Daniel Penny killed a crazy guy while restraining him. He didn’t mean to or want to. Sometimes, things happen in fights, especially to someone with a bunch of hard drugs running through his veins. Penny was right to have restrained the guy. The guy was a threat – a violent lunatic hopped up on goofballs and threatening innocent people. A sane and civilized society accepts the risk that a normal man trying to subdue this lunatic will run a small but real risk of permanently injuring or killing the nut. And a sane society would accept that and not charge the Good Samaritan with a felony and threaten to take away years of his life simply for protecting normal people from a madman that a sane society would have institutionalized long before, as opposed to letting him wander the streets terrifying normal people.
Obtuse leftists will try to equate the dead subway hobo and the dead insurance executive. It’s unclear whether they just don’t understand the basics of morality or are evil. There is an element of the kind of showy radicalism and fascination with political violence that radicals always express, sort of taking wearing a Che T-shirt to the next level. Che was a psychopath, but I guess in the eyes of leftists he was as dreamy as the loon who murdered the executive.
The death of the subway hobo was a small risk of the kind that society should be prepared to take to prevent regular folks from being threatened in public. But what was the murder of the healthcare executive? What did that violence actually do other than provide grim onanistic satisfaction to pampered pinkos who get off on the power trip of hurting those who get in their way? Society makes no cost-benefit analysis regarding the risks of violence as to people who are lawfully engaged in lawful activities because we outlaw violence as a means of influencing lawful actions. It’s off the table. And it needs to be off the table.
A sane society limits violence, restricting it to its proper place. War is an appropriate venue for violence. Celebrating the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah is perfectly right and proper. Violence against actual enemies, that is, people who want to do violence to us to conquer us or exterminate us, is an active social good. But violence against a person who is participating in society according to our laws must be intolerable. You can’t have a democracy where you can effectively change the arrangements in society by merely killing somebody who happens to be lawfully exercising power in a way you dislike. This isn’t a revolution against a tyrant. It’s not lawful resistance against an out-of-control rogue element acting falsely under the cover of authority. This is attempting to change the political dynamic, not by winning at the ballot box, but by simply murdering and opponent and, therefore, intimidating other opponents. It’s terrorism.
That kind of violence undermines civilization, whereas acceptable violence is necessary for civilization’s creation and its perpetuation. A civilized society understands the role of violence and manages. Violence has a role in society. Bad people breaking the law must be stopped. The preferred manner is through the legal process. However, society must also recognize that sometimes the legal process is unable to act in time, like when a subway train is flying through a tunnel and some spaz is threatening to hurt women and children. But murdering an insurance executive? If you think he is not complying with his contractual obligations, you can sue him. If you think he’s a criminal, you can charge him. If you don’t like the healthcare system, you can change it – remember Obamacare? But what you can’t do is shoot him. That doesn’t make society better. That threatens its very foundations.
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