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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32964 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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The issue here is that if the man on the subway successfully choked off the homeless man's blood supply then the window of time where his use of force went from necessary and proportional to unnecessary and disproportionate is incredibly short. The left position is that there should be significant legal risk to imperfect self defense so that people are heavily incentivized to deescalate rather than inexpertly use a chokehold and kill someone.

The Left's position in isolation isn't the biggest issue. Although I can argue that it's vastly underestimating how messy actual violence is to think you can easily damn someone for imperfect defense.

The issue is that position as part of a package of other positions that make self-defense more necessary - like weakening the ability to contain segments of the population that disproportionately create these safety concerns by trying to make the prison system "fairer" (i.e. less punitive).

Yeah, I think the second paragraph is a big part of it. If once every now and then a homeless man threw trash at people on a subway, then endure it and wait for the police to show up is pretty tolerable. If they're doing it constantly and the police do nothing then the temptation to take matters into your own hands is quite high. Effective policing is an important public service the state needs to provide.

Effective policing is an important public service the state needs to provide.

I think the Left has worked itself into a shoot - to use wrestling lingo - on cops being if not useless or outright harmful, at least vastly overdeployed as a solution to problems.

I suppose I can see that argument for a high trust, low crime society. I just don't know how it maps to the US.

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