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Crime's Amoral Victims
WAGC
Member Posts: 81 ✭✭
Crime's Amoral Victims
http://www.shadeslanding.com/firearms/als.v1.html
Jeffrey R. Snyder
So often the question of what to do about violent crime in America is addressed strictly as a problem in social engineering, a search for the public policies that will best secure the greatest safety for the greatest number. What laws do we enact, what programs do we institute, to dissuade the individual inclined to commit violent crime, or to change the material or moral conditions from which such persons emerge, to prevent crime before it occurs?
Typically, conservatives have sought to control violent crime by increasing the certainty, severity and length of punishment, proposing to build more prisons, limit plea bargaining, abolish parole, try juveniles as adults and vigorously implement the death penalty. Liberals, on the other hand, generally have sought to control violent crime by improving the material and social conditions and opportunities of the underclass, through vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws and poverty, education, job training and drug treatment programs.
Missing from the debates over the likely effectiveness of these proposals, lost in both liberal and conservative schemes to produce a safer world by preventing crime before it occurs, is recognition of the necessity of dealing with crime as it occurs. It is no answer to say the police serve this function, for they, too, are only a deterrent.
Criminals choose the time and place for their deeds, and they take care not to commit their crimes in the vicinity of the police. No matter how many police we place on city streets, the police simply will not be there at the moment they are needed.
There is, however, one person who is always at the scene of the crime who can do something about it, then and there -- the intended victim. Amazingly, our policy discussions about crime never ask whether the intended victim has a duty, to himself, to his family or community, to defend himself, and stop the criminal before he preys upon others.
The fact that both liberal and conservative policies regarding crime studiously ignore the remedy of self-help reflects our collective desire for government to "solve" the problem of crime institutionally, without our participation. Indeed, it is common for law enforcement and the media to counsel that, when confronted by violence or threat of violence, citizens should simply hand over the goods and accede to the criminal's demands, resisting only if it appears the criminal will kill anyway. Let the state deal with villains.
The fact that our proposed solutions to the problem of violent crime are fashioned to succeed without our participation, our society's counsel that, at the very moment of crime, the criminal is to be confronted with a moral vacuity and an eager accession to his demands, are themselves symptomatic of the reason violent crime flourishes in our society. In truth, the problem of rampant crime cannot be addressed without discussing the moral responsibility of the intended victim, or the expectations of society regarding the behavior of citizens confronting violent crime.
It cannot be true both that violent crime is an offense against the person and dignity of the victim, and that citizens ought not resist violent crime, but leave crime to be dealt with by the state. Consider the moral contradictions inherent in the notion that eager cooperation is the proper or best response to a violent criminal's demands.
Why should criminals respect our lives or our liberty, when we ourselves do not value them highly enough to assume the responsibility to defend them, and do not hold them worth fighting for? Why, if society counsels a ready accession to the criminal's demands, why, if law enforcement itself counsels criminals that such cooperation is their due, why, if the criminal is not to be met with outraged, immediate resistance, would a criminal believe that what he is doing is actually wrong? Because laws make it so? His crime then is solely against the state, not against the person of the victim.
To say that the victim should cooperate because no wallet, purse, car, or property is worth the victim's life is to offer a clever rationalization for moral cowardice. Robbery or carjacking are no more about property than rape is about sex. Violent crime commandeers the victim's person and liberty. It is an act of enslavement.
Your wallet, your car may not be worth your life, but your liberty and dignity are; and if they are not worth fighting for, they do not exist. To cooperate in order to preserve your life is to affirm that you may be ruled by force, and to encourage the very depredations you seek to avoid.
Violent crime flourishes in good part because society, each of us, refuses to condemn the violent criminal with our deeds at the precise moment that that condemnation is required, believing instead that laws will "communicate," and are sufficient to enforce, values we ourselves will not stand up and fight for. We marvel that crimes which thirty years ago were unthinkable become commonplace, never seeing that the increased depravity of criminals mirrors our own refusal to act upon moral judgment, our own belief that an amoral response to crime is both possible and desirable.
Let the social engineers do their best. Perhaps our institutions can save us, without our participation. More likely, however, violent crime will continue to flourish and criminals will grow bolder, for the streets of America are now a moral vacuum, the victims do not count their liberty worth fighting for, and each person believes that his safety is someone else's responsibility. Criminals will hold the upper hand until we learn, and teach, that fighting crime is everyone's responsibility. Dignity and liberty demand no less.
The Second Amendment IS our Homeland Security
http://www.shadeslanding.com/firearms/als.v1.html
Jeffrey R. Snyder
So often the question of what to do about violent crime in America is addressed strictly as a problem in social engineering, a search for the public policies that will best secure the greatest safety for the greatest number. What laws do we enact, what programs do we institute, to dissuade the individual inclined to commit violent crime, or to change the material or moral conditions from which such persons emerge, to prevent crime before it occurs?
Typically, conservatives have sought to control violent crime by increasing the certainty, severity and length of punishment, proposing to build more prisons, limit plea bargaining, abolish parole, try juveniles as adults and vigorously implement the death penalty. Liberals, on the other hand, generally have sought to control violent crime by improving the material and social conditions and opportunities of the underclass, through vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws and poverty, education, job training and drug treatment programs.
Missing from the debates over the likely effectiveness of these proposals, lost in both liberal and conservative schemes to produce a safer world by preventing crime before it occurs, is recognition of the necessity of dealing with crime as it occurs. It is no answer to say the police serve this function, for they, too, are only a deterrent.
Criminals choose the time and place for their deeds, and they take care not to commit their crimes in the vicinity of the police. No matter how many police we place on city streets, the police simply will not be there at the moment they are needed.
There is, however, one person who is always at the scene of the crime who can do something about it, then and there -- the intended victim. Amazingly, our policy discussions about crime never ask whether the intended victim has a duty, to himself, to his family or community, to defend himself, and stop the criminal before he preys upon others.
The fact that both liberal and conservative policies regarding crime studiously ignore the remedy of self-help reflects our collective desire for government to "solve" the problem of crime institutionally, without our participation. Indeed, it is common for law enforcement and the media to counsel that, when confronted by violence or threat of violence, citizens should simply hand over the goods and accede to the criminal's demands, resisting only if it appears the criminal will kill anyway. Let the state deal with villains.
The fact that our proposed solutions to the problem of violent crime are fashioned to succeed without our participation, our society's counsel that, at the very moment of crime, the criminal is to be confronted with a moral vacuity and an eager accession to his demands, are themselves symptomatic of the reason violent crime flourishes in our society. In truth, the problem of rampant crime cannot be addressed without discussing the moral responsibility of the intended victim, or the expectations of society regarding the behavior of citizens confronting violent crime.
It cannot be true both that violent crime is an offense against the person and dignity of the victim, and that citizens ought not resist violent crime, but leave crime to be dealt with by the state. Consider the moral contradictions inherent in the notion that eager cooperation is the proper or best response to a violent criminal's demands.
Why should criminals respect our lives or our liberty, when we ourselves do not value them highly enough to assume the responsibility to defend them, and do not hold them worth fighting for? Why, if society counsels a ready accession to the criminal's demands, why, if law enforcement itself counsels criminals that such cooperation is their due, why, if the criminal is not to be met with outraged, immediate resistance, would a criminal believe that what he is doing is actually wrong? Because laws make it so? His crime then is solely against the state, not against the person of the victim.
To say that the victim should cooperate because no wallet, purse, car, or property is worth the victim's life is to offer a clever rationalization for moral cowardice. Robbery or carjacking are no more about property than rape is about sex. Violent crime commandeers the victim's person and liberty. It is an act of enslavement.
Your wallet, your car may not be worth your life, but your liberty and dignity are; and if they are not worth fighting for, they do not exist. To cooperate in order to preserve your life is to affirm that you may be ruled by force, and to encourage the very depredations you seek to avoid.
Violent crime flourishes in good part because society, each of us, refuses to condemn the violent criminal with our deeds at the precise moment that that condemnation is required, believing instead that laws will "communicate," and are sufficient to enforce, values we ourselves will not stand up and fight for. We marvel that crimes which thirty years ago were unthinkable become commonplace, never seeing that the increased depravity of criminals mirrors our own refusal to act upon moral judgment, our own belief that an amoral response to crime is both possible and desirable.
Let the social engineers do their best. Perhaps our institutions can save us, without our participation. More likely, however, violent crime will continue to flourish and criminals will grow bolder, for the streets of America are now a moral vacuum, the victims do not count their liberty worth fighting for, and each person believes that his safety is someone else's responsibility. Criminals will hold the upper hand until we learn, and teach, that fighting crime is everyone's responsibility. Dignity and liberty demand no less.
The Second Amendment IS our Homeland Security
Comments
Death to Tyrants!!!
Jesus Christ believed in the right to keep and bear arms, Luke 22:36.
-Gunphreak