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Have you ever been seriously injured by a criminal or have had a loved one seriously injured by a criminal? Vengeance is a perfectly natural and reasonable exp

• dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Have you ever been seriously injured by a criminal or have had a loved one seriously injured by a criminal? Yes, both. > Vengeance is a perfectly natural and reasonable expectation of someone in such a situation Natural, obviously (everything that occurs is "natural"; there is nothing but nature.) Reasonable, no. > and an essential element of justice. This is a moral axiom that is far from universally accepted, rather than any kind of statement of verifiable fact. > If the state doesn't provide it, people will take it into their own hands. If the state doesn't provide it, some subset of victims will take it into their own hands (and even if the state does provide any particular version of "vengeance", some subset of victims will still take additional or differently-targeted vengeance into their own hands.) There are lots of things some percentage of people will do on their own if the state doesn't do it for them, but that fact is not, in and of itself, support for the claim that the state doing those things is essential.