Desperation defense of terrorists and criminals

[Kriminal99]

Some recent threads such as "is terrorism justified" and "do you dig violence" have hit on similar topics so I thought I would make a short version of an argument defending some kinds of violent acts.

 

First criminals:

 

Lets say we give "immoral act" the definition that a person commiting one has done something to at the expense of others.

 

Robbing someone of 20 dollars is an immoral act because the person losing the 20 dollars has gained nothing for his 20 dollars and overall has been harmed.

 

Decieving someone into thinking a 2 dollar pair of sunglasses is worth 20 dollars such that he buys it for 20 is an immoral act even though you had his consent because you purposely hindered his ability to determine what would benefit him.

 

Decieving a coworker's boss so that he underestimates the coworker's value to the company is an immoral act both because you have undermined the boss's ability to determine value of employees and because you hurt the employee. (Whereas giving objective information on a coworker helps the boss and does not unfairly harm the coworker - fairness is another issue but not relevant to this argument) Another similar act is deceiving a person's love interest such that she has a lesser view of that person.

 

Of these three, only the first is definitely considered a crime in most countries. The second may or may not be considered a crime depending on the circumstances and location. The third however is pretty much beyond the ability of any lawmaking authority to recognize and prevent.

 

Of the three, the one that is least likely to be considered the crime has the most detrimental impact on a person's life. Most law systems are pretty much limited to prevention of physical acts of force at the expense of others. Indirect forces used to benefit at the expense of others such as deception are rarely recognized by law.

 

People victimized by such behavior must either ignore and/or accept the behavior, or try to gain some form of retribution on their own. If they choose the latter, their options are limited to either similar behavior, or breaking the law.

 

Of the two, the latter is the morally superior. Giving the transgressor an explanation of why his acts would cause others to try and stop him and then stopping him if he persists is the most likely to halt his behavior as he has been provided with the best understanding of the situation possible. However any physical action which could normally be taken against him is deemed a crime, as well as threatening to do so. Thus the true victim's options for justice are further limited to either responding with similar deceptive tactics, or commiting physical violence of an extreme nature that result in permant harm or death to the transgressor. Anything less than this means that the true victim will end up in jail and the transgressor would have suffered no signifigant punishment for his ammoral act.

 

Thus you have the ironic situation that a moral person be deemd a criminal while an ammoral person be deemed a (innocent, depending on how naive the law system is) victim

 

Just as you might believe you have the right to shoot someoen before they shoot you, might you argue you have the right to shoot someone (the only way to punish someone in a world that does not recognize deception as a crime) who has caused you great harm through deception.

 

Terrorists:

 

Similarly, an external political entity which lacks the capitol to stand up to a greater political power could justify acts of extreme violence in response to manipulative tactics on the part of the stronger power which harm the small political entity - assuming the small political entity acted morally otherwise.