Amazing what the suitable application of antibiotics does for ones mind... when fighting off disease, and with all other conditions still operable, here is the sort of drivel I can generate.
Coherent?
Not necessarily.
If you have any argument with what follows, do understand I am a sick man doing his best to stay awake.
And if you find any of it lucid and coherent, it is by pure accident.
You have been warned.
* * *
Throughout my life I have had the fascination with warfare that, to some degree, all boys have. To me it wasn't the violence, gruesome and repulsive beyond all doubt, nor the equipment, which is fascinating in its own right, but neither of those were the entry point to understanding what war. When our Nation State systems come into conflict that cannot be solved by diplomacy or, even worse, are caused by diplomacy, what happens at that scale is what happens at the personal scale: indifference, hostility, conflict. The first is the most rare, and Nations rarely become indifferent to other Nations and that is because it is the lack of caring or wanting to be involved, thus it is an emotional divestment. On a personal scale I know this best, and when I am indifferent to something it is just that, not a lie or deceit or feigning indifference. That tends to get people who want emotional investment in a relationship a very bad feeling, yet the balm for the fiery passion is the cold ice of nothing.
Of the second, hatred, I know little. Hatred, true hatred not mere dislike, is an investment of emotion equal to love, but not diametrically opposed. Indifference is the opposite to either, which is why it is the hardest to handle. Love and hate require one to invest time, energy, and a part of oneself into those feelings, thus from a center point of indifference they both fall along an axis away from it, although and minor angles. That is why love can flip to hate, it is but the slight shift sideways of love and carries all the emotional strength of former love. Hate, much more rarely, can flip to love but love requires trust and hatred abjures all trust. To me trust is the coin of the emotional realm, and it is of high value all on its own, without other emotions invested into it. Trust with admiration and fidelity is friendship, and I have had few friends in life: that is because trust comes hard and the amount for a friendship requires building, while one can create their own false trust to get love to well up inside one's soul. There are those who think that trust has been established and feel love, while no trust has been built and that leads to misunderstanding, problems and either the hard work of building trust or the decay of love to hatred, which requires none, and that creates the grounds for hostility.
Of this third I can say I have no enemies. I like to keep it that way. There have been rare instances of confrontation or conflict, but for those indifference serves quite well. The instances where actual fighting takes place have been rare with me, and I do agree that the greatest of all fighters are those that can win without fighting. I do not trust the heat and passion of conflict as it is the wild part of man that resides within us all, the untamed beast willing to expend any energy, use any justification, do anything to expend itself in wild abandon. I do not trust that part of myself and keep it in check because its use must be rare for me to be civilized, and I must be fully justified in the few times I actually need to let that beast out.
War is not just conflict, not just the wild beast let out: we have codified and adjusted ourselves to understand that we must have limits within war so as to have civilization after war. Those who do not do that are true savage man returned for a visit of chaos and horror that knows no bounds upon us. The difference between civilized man and savage man is chaining the passions of the beast within us. So to is the difference between pure savage war, red of tooth and claw, and that war between Nations that recognize that war is not an end in and of itself, but only a means to an end. To ensure our own safety we must adhere to those laws of war we have created when in conflict with others who enjoin same. To those who cannot constrain themselves and take to war wantonly, savagely and recognize no limits, they are a threat to all mankind and must be ended as the rabid dog must be killed.
* * *
When I asked my father about the weapons of war he stated clearly: they are tools, they can be used correctly or incorrectly, they can be used to intimidate, to threaten, to kill or to protect, but in the end they are but tools that must be understood and cared for. I have had no fear of weapons in my life for they are tools, no better nor worse than a radial arm saw or screwdriver or paring knife. Nor is a weapon power, in and of itself, save for its propellants and the physics behind them, but they do not kill on their own, nor act on their own, nor walk around and take to being alive. Like any tool it requires respect, though no less so than a motor vehicle which is by far more deadly and in far more hands than weapons. Nor is there a magic to them, a great and secret unlocking of the soul that suddenly turns one from civilized man to ravaging beast. Weapons cannot do that.
You can.
My trust in the control of that beast has been one that has left me in grave doubt that it would remain in check throughout my life. Self-control is paramount and I must exercise it each and every day of my life to remain civilized. That means I must remain civil to my fellow man, know matter how much they yell, scream, utter profanities, and seek to demean me. I know those are the routes that children take and when done by adults it shows lack of understanding of the world and great desire to revert to childhood. I return such emotional hatred expressed towards me with indifference. I am a civilized adult, for all the fact the barbaric beast inside me is ever present. I can control that beast within me. I find it very strange that others give it a venue to escape through their passionate hatred that goes into unreason.
When vitriol is spread my way I see the mask of civilization falling away and savage man appear. It is as plain as day is from night.
For many years I ensured that my control of the beast was given no easy venue, no quick path to violence and I ensured that my life remained apart from my fellow man's passion to control those around him. Without reason we are lost, and I am willing to listen to other points of view, but when all is said and done my reason prevails for myself. Emotional arguments give me no thrill, no fulfillment, no deeper vestment in what I see, think and believe. In my understanding of myself I placed trust in understanding what went on around me and for that I have learned the few great truths of mankind.
The first is that we need each other. The true savage, no matter how much it seeks to rampage, dares not go full out on its own for in destroying all around it, then it destroys itself. Thus we need each other and in that clasping of need to need we create the first great reasoned construct we call friendship, love, marriage. It is invariant across all mankind. From that comes that first great set of Laws that are not the Laws of Nature, but the created laws of man and that is: Law of Nations.
The second is that all of our rights and liberty, positive and negative, are vested in each and every one of us and cannot be divorced from us. Thusly man is not perfect nor even perfectible as we must keep our savage nature in check via reason and no Angel need do that... and even they have their faults depending on who you talk to. Thus with the Law of Nations with us in pairs we now create culture, society and the first things that begin to give us shape and form to our lives. We can and do come to common agreement with our fellow man in understanding, but that is limited without means to invest our understanding amongst ourselves. A primitive village size reaches 120 to 150 before internecine conflict that normally arises amongst mankind takes hold and splinters part of that village off. To grow larger we must create organs for society that we can invest some of our negative liberties to, and agree not to practice those liberties on our own.
The third thing we create is governance from those organs officially recognized by our society, and that we call government. Thus government does not come first, for that is our clasping to each other and creating the Law of Nations. Nor does it come second as the first fulfillment of the Law of Nations is society. It is only with society that wishes to grow and keep a larger circle of people with it that we get government, to go beyond our natural inability to deal with larger groups of people over 150 in number.
From that our trust is placed, firstly, in each other as people who form a society. Without that basic trust we can have nothing greater that we can work towards so as to supply those who come after us with a better life and chance to achieve more than we can. The die is cast with this, and anything that goes contrary to this seeks to destroy society and our contact with each other.
Our second trust we have is in ourselves, to use our liberty and rights wisely and to agree that some we may not practice lest they endanger our first trust. If any man could declare war for all of society, then we would be lost as a society and people, both, due to the chaos that would follow this. We agree, then, to wage no Private War without Public consent via the organs of society we create. Those organs are created to ensure that I do not endanger you, by resuming my full liberty and rights, and that you do not endanger me via your resumption of all that you are born with. Nature gives us those things, those rights and liberties, but it is we who control them through our powers of reason and self-restraint. Any who praise those who wage such savage war wish ill upon society and his fellow humans in that society including himself.
The Third trust is that we create government to safeguard us so we do not overstep our rights and liberties without agreed-upon means to do so from our society which are enacted by government. As such government becomes the vessel for our negative rights and liberties, which are the most dangerous things we have as humans. We agree to lay savagery aside, via self-restraint, and then further agree that there are individuals who cannot see right from wrong, who cannot practice self-restraint and who would become a danger to us all if we did not have some means to exercise our negative liberties with accountability to all of society.
These are the basic truths I know and see around me.
* * *
The positive liberty of self-defense is a boon to each man and woman as it allows us to protect ourselves when government cannot do so. As government is a mere structure to which we abide for common agreement, it has the limits of that structure which are those of the individuals within government to ensure that their jobs are done. As mortals and humans they cannot be at all places, at all times, ever-ready with the scales of justice to protect each and every one of us. When we create society protected by government, our fellow man become citizens of Nations and each Nation may have its own way of doing things but any that seek to deprive man of his positive liberties, particularly self-defense, has a word associated with it: Tyrannical.
Any government that seeks to subsume positive liberties that citizens retain so as to build a stronger society missteps and becomes a villain able to use our trusted negative liberties against us. Intentions matter not in this realm, and it is often the sweetest, most gentle of reasons to 'help' our fellow man through government that has the clenching hand of the Tyranny behind it. There need not be on single Tyrant, any group or association or even like-minded individuals who may wish nothing but the best for their fellow man, can be the form of such Tyranny. Such governments that seek to do more must, then, take more not just in funds or physical goods, but in our dearest liberty that allows us to build our society and ourselves. Ones health, when directly administered to by the individual involved, has the greatest oversight and wherewithal behind it. Even if poor, any individual is better off than having government minister to you, as government then takes control of your health.
The order we create is inverted in doing that, and we become mere objects of government, not even subjects to it.
Back before the last Presidential Election I felt the need to write of what I felt more than reasoned was approaching: a storm. Not a physical one, but one set to rip into our society and seek to rend it asunder. Once felt at the emotional level I applied reason to see what the pathways were that were leading to this end, and I was displeased to find very many of them. The hand of Tyranny and Despotism was stirring and it took the form of my fellow citizens who were starting to break with our common agreement and the Law of Nations. Savage man was returning, not in the form of terrorists so easy to identify, but in the form of the vitriol spilled by fellow citizens over things purely political. With politics being further down the list than even government, it is a long, long way from primary truths, and yet is the way we manage our governmental affairs on the societal level.
I had witnessed passion before, even misplaced, but this was different in tone, tenor and kind.
It has always been understood that battlefield decisions taken by leaders are binding, more than any treaty. Yet this was ignored during the 1990's and when President Bush (43) sought to hold a treaty-breaker accountable there was a howl of outrage. No leader who breaks his pledge under combat is worth anything and is the most vile of people for nothing he will say can ever be trusted. A Nation's leader is at the highest point of this, and any who would risk going back to war by breaking their word has ill-intent for his countrymen, and does not care if they live or die, just that his personal ends are met. A cease-fire does not end a war, a peace agreement does. Some few of my fellow citizens in my country, and citizens of other Nations have forgotten this and protested that a Nation's leader should not be held to his word to gain a cease-fire while at war.
This is not greater civilization that is supported, it is just the opposite.
Savage man returns not wanting any one to be held accountable for their actions, and for such savagery to manifest it must find ways to spread itself, and it has. The beast inside wants out, and will betray anyone, any belief, any system and even go so far as to endanger all mankind to be free of fetters and restraint. If a genocidal world leader cannot be held to his word given under fire to gain a mere cease-fire, then who, exactly, will ever be held accountable for anything? The beast has asked us to set aside our self-control and condone the actions of a genocidal tyrant.
I did not and do not.
Ever.
I will not let the beast inside me free.
Yet I see some few of my fellow citizens doing just that, and that path only leads to blood for that is the price of savagery, red of tooth and claw. Without accountability from the Law of Nations, no matter how hard and how many lives it takes to sustain, to NOT do so risks everything we have. To me that simple truth is clear. I cannot give my fellow man self-restraint, only he can take that up as his burden, and when it is shucked to the ground I know we are all in grave danger.
* * *
The manifestations of the beast clawing to get out is reflected by those who have disdained our normal course of affairs in politics and society. This is not limited to any 'side', and those wishing to remove the barriers of Nation State for things like citizenship can be found amongst groups that define themselves by race, for that is what La Raza means, to those wishing to forgiven any and all violations of the order of Nations as being mere 'civil' criminals, while ignoring that it is the laws of two Nations and between Nations that is being ripped apart, to such lovely folks as the Libertarians who cannot conceive of why liberty comes from the protection of Nation States and the offices of the Wall Street Journal who would love to dissolve National boundaries to form a giant, and very low cost, labor market.
Notice that these groups span 'left' and 'right'?
Those wishing to tear down the Nation State have a minor problem in that there is nothing to replace it for securing the rights and liberties of individuals in civil societies that are different. You cannot be BOTH multiculti AND wishing to grant amnesty to those violating the Law of Nations which ensures that cultures can have their own sovereignty in civil society and protection from other societies. To do otherwise is to exalt culture while wishing to homogenize it, remove it, and make mankind bland. You can have rich cultural diversity by the protection offered by Nation States OR the blandness of a global Empire. Yet this simple bit of logic, that cultures need to be able to define and protect themselves so you can actually HAVE multiculturalism is lost upon the elitists. This was one of the things Woodrow Wilson actually got correct, amongst all the errors and horrific ideas he had. This was why he did nothing about the Armenian Genocide... it was the problems of another society in a sovereign Nation State. Not our affair at all. And we wouldn't want to endanger those contracts Singer had over there.
Then comes the lovely labor market folks of the Libertarian and WSJ persuasion who seek to 'free' labor markets, thusly making them sink to the lowest common denominator between Nations. It is with Nations that we protect our society and when you want to remove borders you remove the rationale of society being able to enforce labor standards. We may get sweet words about 'regularization' but we see no effort nor funds put towards such things and establishing an orderly labor brokerage system that allows Nations to ensure that their labor standards can be protected by NOT having illegal labor available. Truly the 'left' should detest this concept of illegal labor undercutting labor unions and standardized work rules... but just the opposite is seen as they want to 'regularize' that there is no system to ensure such standards and then grant 'amnesty' thus diluting a culture they should be supporting. And on the 'right' the upholding of economic principles going back to Adam Smith has the preconditions of the Law of Nations upon it, which give Nations sovereignty over their own workforce that cannot be granted to any other peoples or society or culture save by losing a war to them.
These dangers of Transnationalism have been present for some time, but had generally been sidelined until the late 1980's and throughout the 1990's. This force is like that of National Socialism save that it is Transnational, not International, in nature. And like all forms of socialism it seeks to put man at mercy of the State. It is unfortunate that in dissolving the basic concepts of having Nations to defend cultures, societies and individuals, that the very thing that is sought will not end in greater liberty and freedom in a civil society, but an erosion of all societies and cultures when none of them can be defended. When those waging Private War are gaining support to be 'legitimized' and the order of Nations being eroded to allow 'free movement' of people without any oversight or due process, that ends not with utopia but chaos. Whenever a civilized order falls into decay and then collapses the thing that follows gains the name 'Dark Age' with attendant 'Iron Times'.
How facile are the arguments that no one should be punished or restricted for anything, save those you don't like politically.
How horrific the final end of that path when all are threatened and we have nothing to fall back to as our culture, society and Nation have been eroded so it can only be tyrannical, oppressive and ineffectual all at the same time.
Being civilized is not about being nice.
It is about being civil, but upholding that there is an order of man that is man created and comes from our need to ensure our trust of each other via society. That requires that we do those things necessary to nurture, sustain and protect our culture, society and Nation States. That means doing the right thing, even if it comes to blood as that is the final determinant of civilization. If you are unwilling to fight for anything and castigate those who do fight to protect you, then you are not enlightened but ready to be enslaved by the first willing to do violence upon you to make you comply with their wishes.
When your fear, hatred and dread of violence drive you to pacifism and defeatism, then you are not being 'civilized' but seeking a utopian world and none of the efforts to that have ever ended well and most have a high body count in the millions to tens of millions. It is the logic of utopia that first you try reason, then persuasion, then insults, then threats, then brutality and then killing your way to the golden land. You start out being a pacifist. You end up with blood around your feet as others do not want your utopia, yet you will make them do so as you are so wise, smart and able that you know they could just see reason if you threaten them enough. Then the violence to ensure that you will make your vision of a peaceful world, don't mind the corpses of your causing about you.
Do note that Woodrow Wilson started as an Isolationist and found that trying to avoid war got him war, and that by not fighting all the allies of Germany we were left out of the final division of spoils by Britain and France. By being elite, by being picky, and by being unable to to endanger US business interests abroad, he got us such a lovely mess in the Middle East that there are still groups there fighting over the problems caused by the Treaties after the war. Heaven forbid that anyone point out that by not fighting hard enough and wide enough that the very elitism being touted today caused much of the worlds ills.
Can't do that!
Its not nice.
* * *
An interesting thing about growing up in a socialist sympathizing household: I got to hear all the critiques of the USSR and Fascism and why they weren't, really and for true, socialist efforts. Its fascinating. I'll try to give the basic overview that I got when growing up.
If you follow Marx, and if you can get through his thick texts and skewed viewpoints, you come down to the final state of mankind requiring a relatively long era of robust capitalism. By Marx capitalism does, by necessity, exploit the working classes, but there are strong positive points to capitalism that have been forgotten by the modern 'left', globally. Yes, I know, its hard to conceive of it, isn't it? Yet there was Karl Marx writing in support of the North during the US Civil war because it was on the road to a capitalist system while the South was seen as backwards, even retrograde. Progress requires capitalism to do its good works first and robustly to usher in that golden transition to socialism then communism.
But what are these good works?
First is literacy. Earlier systems of economics did not require highly skilled labor beyond what could be taught for a craft. An industrialized age worked with machines that multiplied the power of man to build and create and to run those machines took an understanding of them. Thus literacy was necessary for a capitalist society to thrive.
Second is raising the wealth of mankind. Even after being exploited, the industrial worker was far, far better off than his agrarian counter-part, not only in financial terms but in terms of increased life-span and material wealth. To support that diffuse wealth and increased life span required an improvement in infrastructure so that an expanding population can be sustained and wide-spread modernization enacted.
Third is that capitalism, as a highly exploitative economic order, is very aggressive in seeking the greatest marginal wealth for the owners of the means of production. This forces capitalists to ever be seeking new resources, new labor markets and new means and methods of production to increase efficiency and bottom-line profit margin. Capitalism excels in this and is the greatest power it has.
Fourth is that in its expansiveness, capitalism is an international order by definition. By expanding between Nations and raising living standards and educational standards, it brings the first awareness across all mankind and begins the unification of the working class. It is this last which is a necessary pre-condition for socialism, then communism, and you cannot get to this pre-condition without the good works of capitalism to do them.
Taking these as the given understanding of how you get to the Marxian end-state utopia, the critiques of the Soviet system and Fascism are obvious.
The Red revolution in Russia could not bring in socialism as none of the pre-conditions for it existed. There was no industrialization to speak of in Russia in 1917, save for a few factories here and there run by cronies of the Czar, a few local industrialists and some foreign ones. Russia was, by and large, a peasant state, not even up to Mercantilism. Thus what you got was a form of State capitalism, not socialism or communism, and that system was run to the benefit of the elite class.
Fascism, or Socialism in one country, was seen as premature, at best as the pre-conditions, even in Germany, had not been met for a socialist revolution (either Brown or Red). For all of its industrial might, Nazi Germany would field armies that were, at best, 60% mechanized, as compared the US forces that were 100% mechanized. As a regional power Germany was a major player in Europe, but it was not able to support a highly mechanized system. Further, by brokering with the capitalists, the fascists (both in Italy and Germany) created State capitalism, not a road to socialism.
State capitalism is a system in which the State has co-opted private ownership of capital and then utilizes the remains for its own purposes. Nation States do not have interests in increasing literacy, wealth, or improvement of marginal production standards, but in pure, raw power of industry. It is not, of necessity, aggressively expansive as privately owned capitalism is. In point of fact State capitalism tends to remove both the aggressiveness and benefits of capitalist systems when it is in control so as to safeguard State power. Thus these are highly political, corrupt and retrograde systems that are not improving the lot of the working class but, instead, using the power of the State to ensure that the working class cannot come to power.
As such the 'evolutionary' path of socialism, known as Progressivism in the US and by social democracy in Europe, seeks to entwine the State deeply with private capitalism so as to gain power to help reduce the ills of capitalism. And yet these ills are the strengths of capitalism: exploitation of the working class, aggressively expansive in both resource use and production capability, and being able to innovate and create so as to increase marginal production and worker efficiency. Any work to soften capitalism or otherwise make it a 'fair' system actually slows the coming of socialism and lengthens the agony of the working class. And when the State becomes so entwined with private capital as to direct it, you then have State capitalism and you will NEVER get to socialism.
Thus it is the job of a good socialist to work hard for the capitalist system to hasten the speed of its rise and its eventual transformation into its end state. You cannot make that end state arrive faster by trying to thwart the ills capitalism causes in the way of warfare, strife and exploitation, but, instead, seek to shorten the time of each by more robustly supporting the pace of change. Wars should be short, hard and gotten to a basic end so as to bring stability back to the capitalist system by working out which capitalist endeavors work better than others. Strife is ameliorated by the work you do in utilizing your wealth to help others on the road to a productive working life. And exploitation is to be made omni-present so people are made aware of it and the consciousness of the working class raised by the other works of capitalism so that exploitation can be clearly seen.
You just gotta love socialist critique of socialist movements: in its own logic domain it can be nastily steel-trap.
Wrong, yes, as it is an end-state system and presupposes a number of items that cannot be had by mortal man. That comes with any belief in utopia: that man will, somehow, stop being man. Unfortunately man is of Nature and being creatures of Nature we are doomed to Natures vagaries. Those come with anything that consists of energy and matter, so even some lovely nanocarbon intelligence system is still restricted by the laws of physics, chemistry and entropy. Socialism by requiring that we get to a point where all work is equal, misses the point that all work is not equal and to get to that equality of work then any task must be equally learnable. Even with that and application of equal effort, one man's end works will be different from another's and that is the basis of liberty and prosperity: unequal works gaining different appreciation and value.
You cannot live long and prosper if you do not have the basis for prosperity which is differences in results and appreciation of results. When all results are absolutely equal, then nothing is worth the effort of doing. Equality of results is the grave, where all men are equal once more. Between the cradle and the grave, if you do not have differences then the life of man is no different than in the cradle OR the grave. That is not utopia.
That is Hell on Earth.
* * *
So when I see the order of society beginning to crumble and those waging war against all mankind being pardoned and even exulted, there comes a basic question: can this society actually respect me and my liberty if it is so willing to throw away the meanings of them and the support of them?
Add that to the movement to a system that sees government do more and more to ensure that the few are taxed to death so the many need pay none, and you have the majority no longer invested in the Nation as a whole. The order of bureaucracy is inefficient paperwork, and when done with government or government oversight, you gain layers of inefficiency added in to 'help'. When the State can order children's books destroyed because they have lead based ink, and not one case, EVER, of lead poisoning from children gobbling down such books can be cited ANYWHERE, then you are no longer in a free state.
We have been treating our children worse and worse by adding money and 'oversight' to the public schools, politicizing those schools, reducing the topics involved in those schools and turning such schools from places of basic education into equal results warehouses.
If that is what we do for our children, then the adult community is no longer to be trusted.
For all the money and 'help' of governments, for decades, the reading rate has been dead flat from when Poor Johnny couldn't read. It hasn't changed enough to justify all the extra bureaucracy, cash and layers of paperwork put on in the name of 'fairness'.
The iron law of bureaucracy is that when you add on a layer for 'oversight' or 'efficiency' the entire system loses accountability AND efficiency.
I was a federal bureaucrat involved in systems procurement and justification and I know those numbers all too well.
The adult community has been lulled by the siren's song of government competence for ever more government to do 'good' which means layer upon layer of it intruding into life, work, school, and even our pleasure time. To do that means that those areas it touches become less accountable to YOU and that accountability via the government is made harder as it is spread out amongst multiple bureaucracies. When that happens, you can no longer have directly accountable government and find, instead, that government is now seeking to tell you what to do, how to live, and take control of the very basis of your freedom and liberty.
The trust issue between my own inner barbarian and a society gladly marching into barbarism is a no-brainer: I trust myself far more than the swell hearted bozos giving us the siren's song of government competence. As government adds in layers of bureaucracy, oversight and authoritarian rules, it becomes more brittle, less efficient and far less competent. It is the perversion of our negative rights to be used to destroy children's books. It is impossible to protect everyone at all times from everything, and POSSIBLE lead exposure due to some child eating a book a day for a decade really does not have me all too worried, but it does the bureaucrats given control of this at the Consumer Products Safety Commission.
They will probably outlaw hammers, next, as they are patently unsafe when compared to children's books with a bit of lead ink in them. I can show you injuries and even deaths caused by hammers. Lead in children's books? Lotsa luck there, I tellya.
So when trust breaks down between man and society, man must look to his own self-protection.
I am a much, much better steward of my negative liberties than government shall ever be: I can ensure that, today, I will not be a barbarian and renew that afresh each and every single day. That is a civil commitment I take up so as to protect myself, those I love and society as a whole... although that latter seems to have an ill-eye towards me and many others given how much killers and rapists are excused because, really, it was 'conditions' that 'drove them to it' and not their own idea at all. They couldn't stop the movement of their limbs, I'm sure, and have become simple robots in need of reprogramming...
What do you mean they haven't? That is how our justice system is treating them.
When you try to make automatons out of thinking, living human beings and excuse actions done on the basis of exterior ills, you are then indicting society and not holding the actual actor accountable. I am accountable for my actions and I expect equality of justice to hold that we are each accountable for our actions as members of society. Even negligent ones. Its bad enough that we push so much insanity on our children and disrespect them by not wanting them to experience life, save some bland equal outcome rendition of it, but then we give pedophiles lean treatment because of 'circumstances'?
That is a description of a society losing control of itself and no longer willing to stand for any societal norms.
When all outcomes are equal, then there are no differences between saint and sinner, good works and evil ones... all are seen as equal and our lives become equally meaningless.
Thus I seek out the means to protect myself, learn their responsibilities and exercise my freedom of self-protection.
And ensuring that tyranny cannot be established.
By use of the former I seek to get the latter.
I can, do and must rule myself.
That protects you.
That protects me.
And if I can control my life, then you can do so with yours.
That is where accountability starts.
Stop trying to give it to government for us both.
To do so is asking for a Dark Age with Iron Times.