This isn\’t so much written down as it\’s part of the assumed compact between ourselves as individuals and The State.
One in three young people living in cities thinks it is acceptable to carry a knife in self-defence because violence is so rife, according to research revealed today. Teenagers and twenty-somethings have lost faith in politicians, the police or schools to protect them and increasingly believe they need to be armed to defend themselves against people of their own age. Nearly half said they knew someone who had been a victim of knife crime.
We allocate to it a monopoly of legal violence and in return it protects us from said violence. After the defense from violence from those outside said State, it\’s the most fundamental part of the bargain we make.
And if the State doesn\’t keep its side of that bargain, then do we have to keep our side, by continuing to rely upon its protection, or are we righteous in arranging for our own?
“We allocate to it a monopoly of legal violence and in return it protects us from said violence.”
Except, of course, when said legal violence is used against the wrong people. Then, it seems, some of us don’t like it at all…
I’ve always been amazed at the state’s dictum “Do not tkae the law into your own hands”, in view of the dereliction of duty by said state re upholding the law. WHOSE hands is it then to be left in – the criminal’s ?
Alan Douglas