"... some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way."
So says Eugene Vologh, speaking of this.
It reminds me of how the news urged unnatural restraint on Americans in the wake of 9-11-01. As if by reacting in the natural, survival-oriented "it's gonna cost ya" manner above would reduce us to savagery, and make us the moral equivalent of those who attacked us.
One of my most serious beefs about the news generally is its failure to distinguish between attacker and attacked. Fighting back is not the same as attacking. What is gratuitous savagery in a terrorist atrocity against innocents, is necessary payment in kind in retaliation.
To do less is to ignore history's greatest lessons. It invariably invites more attacks. In evolutionary terms, survival favors those who fight back. Survival is far less kind to those who choose any other course of action, no matter how thoroughly rationalized as justice, fairness, anti-war, human rights, etc.
hat tip: Instapundit
PS - The Spoons Experience comments:
"GENE VOLOKH IS ONE BLOODTHIRSTY SONOFABITCH
"He's also risen appreciably in my estimation."
In mine, too. I think Vologh has done a major service to an American public cowed almost to the point of neutering by its own media, academic, and cultural elites.
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