Putting Down the Occupier Protests
this grew from a comment I made in http://melvin-udall.livejournal.com/1327177.html?view=8037193#t8037193
I find amusing and incomprehensible that notion that throwing bottles and rocks at police does not constitute "violence." I've actually been injured by a thrown rock, and my wife was once injured by a thrown bottle. While it's true that the police are often in this situation wearing riot armor, which reduces the likelihood of significant injuries, and it's also true that they are in a job where occasional injury is part of the package, the police are still human beings and it is a clear initiation of force against them by the mob.
Likewise I find amusing and incomprehensible the notion that a group of people acquires lagal rights in the public space which one or two people lack. If I block access to public throroughfares in the course of demonstrating or choose to use them as seats or beds I may be lawfully commanded to move by the authorities (and yes, I've been in both situations at various points in my life). Why, if there were a hundred or a hundred thousand people doing the same thing, should they logically believe that they have now acquired some special rights which the individual or couple lacked?
I do know the reasons why, and they are neither peaceful nor logical. A hundred people cannot be easily dispersed by one or two police officers, if they refuse to comply with the law; a hundred thousand require whole companies of troops to move. The mob knows that might makes right: having adopted that principle, however, they lose the moral right to complain when the authorities deploy superior might against them.
The other reason is primate dominance thinking: the mob, if it acquires a leader, becomes a society and hence the decision of each indivdual to stay, or fight, or attack, or do any other thing the leader commands is seen by each individual as "sanctioned" by the group. This is why we need to abolish the "everybody was doing it" defense, and instead treat allegiance to mobs in such situations as an act of vile treason to the larger society which demands more severe punishment. When the law must operate against primate instincts, it must be more severe to deter (which is exactly why rape is more severely punished than is simple assault and battery).
I am glad to see that our city administrations, after the initial period of being awed by the protests, are starting to re-establish the rule of law. This is important, because -- if unchallenged -- the mobs would have been emboldened and become more violent -- note what has been happening in Greece over the last couple of years, in which the government has repeatedly been too cowardly to defend its own authority and in consequence buildings have been burned down and innocents murdered by the mobs.
And before someone says it: No. The right to "peaceably and lawfully assemble" does not give that "assembly" the right to break other laws. Never has, never will.
I find amusing and incomprehensible that notion that throwing bottles and rocks at police does not constitute "violence." I've actually been injured by a thrown rock, and my wife was once injured by a thrown bottle. While it's true that the police are often in this situation wearing riot armor, which reduces the likelihood of significant injuries, and it's also true that they are in a job where occasional injury is part of the package, the police are still human beings and it is a clear initiation of force against them by the mob.
Likewise I find amusing and incomprehensible the notion that a group of people acquires lagal rights in the public space which one or two people lack. If I block access to public throroughfares in the course of demonstrating or choose to use them as seats or beds I may be lawfully commanded to move by the authorities (and yes, I've been in both situations at various points in my life). Why, if there were a hundred or a hundred thousand people doing the same thing, should they logically believe that they have now acquired some special rights which the individual or couple lacked?
I do know the reasons why, and they are neither peaceful nor logical. A hundred people cannot be easily dispersed by one or two police officers, if they refuse to comply with the law; a hundred thousand require whole companies of troops to move. The mob knows that might makes right: having adopted that principle, however, they lose the moral right to complain when the authorities deploy superior might against them.
The other reason is primate dominance thinking: the mob, if it acquires a leader, becomes a society and hence the decision of each indivdual to stay, or fight, or attack, or do any other thing the leader commands is seen by each individual as "sanctioned" by the group. This is why we need to abolish the "everybody was doing it" defense, and instead treat allegiance to mobs in such situations as an act of vile treason to the larger society which demands more severe punishment. When the law must operate against primate instincts, it must be more severe to deter (which is exactly why rape is more severely punished than is simple assault and battery).
I am glad to see that our city administrations, after the initial period of being awed by the protests, are starting to re-establish the rule of law. This is important, because -- if unchallenged -- the mobs would have been emboldened and become more violent -- note what has been happening in Greece over the last couple of years, in which the government has repeatedly been too cowardly to defend its own authority and in consequence buildings have been burned down and innocents murdered by the mobs.
And before someone says it: No. The right to "peaceably and lawfully assemble" does not give that "assembly" the right to break other laws. Never has, never will.