That was the most rediculously one sided article I've ever read.
Quote:
|
Angered by the lack of speed with which local authorities were investigating the killing, the FBI muscled into the fray. Local residents were interviewed, threatened, and interviewed some more.
|
Don't like the federal goverment much, does he.
Quote:
|
Of course, Skidmore is not a community where people just shoot each other.
|
Since a mob of people killed McElroy, it apparently is a community where people just shoot each other.
Quote:
|
Holding to the silence surrounding Ken Rex’s death is worth keeping of the peace, local residents believe.
|
What "peace"? Does McElroy have some vengeful relatives out looking for their own type of vigilante justice or something?
Quote:
|
Thoroughly intimidated, the officer walked away and didn’t have Ken Rex arrested.
|
Sounds like a pretty ineffective police force. Maybe he should have told his higher ups? Maybe gotten the state police envolved.
Quote:
|
However, because Missouri law permits a convicted felon to remain free on bond pending appeal, the grocer and his family daily had to face an enraged McElroy, who made open threats against his accuser.
|
Restraining orders exist for a reason.
Quote:
|
A television network a few years later broadcast a made for TV movie about the event. However, in this story, the vigilantes, after murdering the bully, turn against decent townspeople and are ultimately found out. After all, as the good police officer tells the perpetrators, one "cannot take the law into their own hands" and become vigilantes.
|
Wow. Hollywood made an inaccurate movie about a real event. Holy Crap Robin, To the Batmobile! I fail to see how a fictional account of a real even lends anything to his argument.
Quote:
|
Because there were few law enforcement officials in California, local citizens banded together to fight crime. By all accounts, their actions worked and the crime rate in places like San Francisco was far lower than it is today.
|
Um. There are also a shitload more people in San Francisco today. What type of crimes are we talking about? Violent crimes? Drug related crimes? Cuz you know, drug laws didn't really exist back during the gold rush. Maybe you should qualify your statments next time.
Quote:
|
At this point, most people are ready to say that the prospect of private law enforcement is a guarantee that people will abuse their powers, thus making government-run police a necessity. This argument assumes, of course, that government law enforcement officers do not abuse their powers.
|
No. This assumes that government officers abuse their powers less, or to a less extent, or the abuse of power is more easily remedied. Since state government officials at a high level are directly elected, I would say that this is indeed the case.
Quote:
|
The fact that hundreds of prisoners are released each year because of wrongful convictions puts the lie to that argument. This past year, the State of Illinois released 13 prisoners from death row after DNA testing confirmed their innocence. In other words, the State of Illinois was prepared to kill 13 innocent men and would have done so had not modern science and private attorneys intervened.
|
So... the system works? Death row is a good thing? Viligante mobs lynching people without proof is a thing of the past?
Quote:
|
During the 1980s and much of the 1990s, power-grabbing district attorneys railroaded dozens of innocent people into prison on what turned out to be ludicrous charges of child molestation.
|
Which has to do with vigilantism how?
Quote:
|
The state monopoly on justice, as one can see, offers no protection against false accusation and imprisonment.
|
And vilgilante justice does?
Quote:
|
At the same time, the state will often go to ridiculous lengths not to punish lawbreakers or to allow them to terrorize a community, as was the case with Ken Rex McElroy.
|
The only evidence that you have presented toward this case is one (1) cop who couldn't do his job, and a bunch of scare witnesses. I fail to see how the state is going through rediculous lengths not to punish someone.
Quote:
|
In fact, one can argue that the State of Missouri, by keeping McElroy on the streets of Skidmore, contributed mightily to his death.
|
Again, you never bothered to mention if anybody actually contacted the State police.
Quote:
|
Whoever shot the man did not do so out of meanness or a desire to commit murder, but rather out of sheer terror.
|
And we know this because those who shot Rex came clean with the FBI and said so. Oh wait. No, they didn't.
Quote:
|
State officials, by electing not to protect its citizens, made them vulnerable to a marauding madman.
|
Did state officials know about this? Nowhere in the article do you mention the envolvement of State police.
Quote:
|
By all accounts, McElroy was not treated unjustly. Had a committee of armed citizens been permitted to visit him earlier, perhaps he might even have been persuaded of the error of his ways.
|
Did your crystal ball tell you that?
Quote:
|
Instead, the residents of Skidmore, by obeying the law for more than 10 years, received neither justice nor protection from the State of Missouri. In the end, a rough justice was served, but it proved to be better than what the government had offered.
|
Isn't that what the FBI came all this way to find out? If only people would tell them what happened, who dunnit, and why, maybe we'd be reading a far more succinct and factual account from the FBI rather than from this blathering idiot.
The point is not whether the Goverment is corrupt or ineffective. The point is whether the Goverment is less corrupt and more effective than simple vigilantism.
Futhermore, the author pulls out some stupid facts about Californian vigilantism during the gold rush, and completely forgets about the type of vigilante justice that occured in the south. You know. The white mob lynching black guys type of vigilante justice.
This guy does a disservice to libertarians everywhere by writing this article. What a bunch of crap.