Jeffrey Frawley (9:31 AM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

I agree with and understand your feelings, but there are only two problems with your goal of abandoning due process and destroying evildoers. The less important one is the near certainty of retaliation. One can plan for and accept that risk, find it completely acceptable and go ahead with those satisfying plans of smashing skulls. The more important and difficult problem of abandoning due process is that one can be mistaken about just who the evildoers are. If you kill the wrong person, his survivors will feel exactly as you did, despise you as you did the deceased, plot your demise just as you did, and feel just swell about killing you in the most satisfying manner. As wicked as the rape and murder squads are (very wicked indeed), it is almost certain their members feel sure their enemies did something so terrible as to have earned their abuse - just as you exult at the prospect of throwing away the civil rights of these monsters.

It's a lot of fun thinking about the terrible things we would do to people we think are deserving of it, and I know without a doubt that I would be happy to do such things to anyone who hurt those I love. I also know what a terrible world it would be if everyone else felt free to mutilate whomever they please.

John Ostrander (11:04 AM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

I often feel the same way you do, Michael. Both Mikes, actually.

BUT

I also remember a story I think the three of us did in WASTELAND. I wrote my vision of what was inevitably going to happen in Soth Africa. This was still the OLD South Africa, the apartheid Soth Afirca. The story ended bleakly. Violence was inevitable, I thought, and that it might spill out to the world as well.

It didn't happen. Despite all the evil done there, South Africa found a way out without violence. I watched as Desmond Tutu and others presided over Courts of Reconciliation where the evil was confronted but so was humanity. Something I wish we would do in this country about our past. I was never so glad in my lie to be wrong as I was about South Africa.

I think anger is often an appropriate response to things that happen in this world. And, yes, sometimes violence is as well. I also think it affects everyone who uses it -- even in good causes. I think it is ultimately addictive. And, like most addictions, it consumers the user.

Powerful column, Michael. Thought provoking as well. Thanks for writing it.

Michael H. Price (11:31 AM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

Had a "Ronnie Williams" of my own, back in grammar school -- a bully-for-the-hell-of-it who pushed a bunch of us smaller kids too far, finally, and found himself in for a massed retaliation after the Powers That Did Be (the schoolteachers and the Principal His Ownself) had refused to attempt so much as a reprimand. The bully appeared to develop a more civilized demeanor, although I lost touch with him after he had flunked Sixth Grade twice.

An earlier such schoolyard terror belonged officially to the "Special Education" grades but mingled freely with the general run of students, chiefly for the purpose of whupping up on 'em at recess. When caught in the act by this or that teacher, the kid had a ready reply: "You can't spank me! I'm re-TOR-ded!" Smart. Sometimes, the best offense is a good prefabricated defense.

Went many years without experiencing suchlike again, until the arrival in fairly recent times of a burlier-than-thou newspaper colleague (term used advisedly) who responded to news-judgment disagreements with threats of violence. Went the due-process route with this thug after a staircase-shoving incident, with a complaint to Human Resources and the result of absolutely no action beyond a cautious reprimand -- which brought about an empty apology. As a consequence, this schoolyard-bully-grown-up learned to retrench to subtler acts of treachery. Perhaps a stairway fall of his own would have taught him better than to act like a Neanderthal. Subhuman, indeed, and so dedicated to thuggish misconduct as to learn less blatant methods.

I believe a lot of us in the storytelling racket enjoy spinning the vigilante yarns as a safe-distance theoreticable response to such Real World viciousness. When Tim Truman and I were writing the original run of PROWLER stories -- speaking of vigilantism -- we'd run up against the occasional objection that "the bad guy has to shoot first!" Uhm, no, actually, we're not dealing in role-model stories, here.

Anbody out there seen THE BRAVE ONE, the recent Jodie Foster picture? A great deal of wish-fulfillment, here -- or DEATH WISH-fulfillment, maybe.

Elayne Riggs (11:46 AM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

I think one of the worst things about evil people is that they bring out evil impulses in otherwise good people. It is my continued hope that these otherwise good people (like you, Michael) don't give into their evil impulses. You do that and you've blurred the line between good and evil probably irrevocably.

Jeffrey Frawley (12:15 PM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

To refine my previous comments a bit, I am very sympathetic to Michael Davis's impulses, and completely confident that given sufficient provocation I would want to commit disgusting atrocities on deserving victims. Not only that, I would make every effort to avoid punishment for doing so. The problem is that I know my own judgment is imperfect, and believe many others' judgment is far worse. Human character would have to be much better than it is for making private vengeance permissible to not be very destabilizing toward society. It's self-contradictory to oppose the legality of extra-legal vengeance and yet admit one would pursue it nonetheless - but that's better than the return of the blood feud. Those who insist on extra-legal vengeance would necessarily set themselves outside of law and society - becoming outlaws. When society is sufficiently corrupt or ineffectual such outlawry is both unavoidable and desirable, as folk heroes both real and fictional have demonstrated for millennia; I am simply unconvinced modern society is quite so far gone that the exception should outweigh the rule.

Martha Thomases (1:16 PM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

Figuring out why bad people do bad things is not excusing their actions. It's finding out why it happens so that -- maybe -- it can be prevented the next time.

Michael Davis (1:48 PM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

I posted a comment (twice) that was in response to Elanye's. Both time they ended up a response to Martha. So no Martha-I did not just call you by another woman's name. ;)

Vinnie Bartilucci (3:39 PM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

Every time a (to your eyes) blatantly guilty person gets off scott free, it makes a lot of people want to take up arms and do what the courts couldn't. And sometimes the same people who throw roadblock after roadblock in the way of making sure the blatantly guilty are given "every chance", and eventually find a technicality that gets them off, they also spend a massive amount of time on people who have ALREADY been found guilty, insisting on retrial after retrial, and stay after stay of execution. It's no surprise that people think the system Needs Changing.

But for every time we hear about the system not working, there are hundreds of times across the country that it works just fine. They just don't make the papers. Hundreds of sneaker-thieves get sent to juvie, who knows how many pedophiles get sent to jail, or therapy or whatever. But of course "1,800 planes landed safely" is not a news item, "1 Plane crashes" is.

Any attempt to change the justice system because one case didn't meet our desires will result in a system so chaotic and filled with codicils and amendments as to render no one able to understand it, let alone get justice from it.

We already have the perilously close to double jeapordy scenario where if one court doesn't get a conviction, a higher court can bring the same person back for the nebulous crime of "infringing on civil rights" to make SURE the people get the conviction that they want. I really don't want to see it get any more close than that.

And for all the vitriol you have against murderers and child abusers (and rightly so), there are people out there with the exact same amount of hatred for gun manufacturers, whale fisherman and people who don't signal when changing lanes. So once we decide it's okay to kneecap a couple wanna-be John Wayne Gacys, how do we successfully convince the next guy we shouldn't pop one in the guy who cheats on his taxes so HE has to pay more?

Captain Samuel Vimes puts it best in the Discworld books. He knows it will make things easier if he would break the rules once in a while. But he knows that if you break the rules for a good reason, it makes it all the easier to break them again for a bad reason.

Alan Coil (6:18 PM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

Sometimes violence IS the answer.

Michael Davis (10:20 PM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

It's a bit after 8pm on the West Coast where I am. I have enjoyed (if that's the right word) the day long dialog on this column and have respect for all who have contributed. That said I just watched a report on CNN-there is a serial killer and rapist in Boca Raton who just shot a mother and her VERY YOUNG (no older than 9 I did not catch the age but I'm staring at her picture frozen on my TV screen.) he just shot them both dead. One shot in the head for each because the mother dared to try and protect her child. Regardless of the many points made here, and there were some good ones, I am standing behind my original statement:
I don’t care how you were raised, where you are from, what happened to you in your life or what you believe in. If you attack, rape or murder defenseless people for the sake of some “right” be it you think you are right or believe it’s your birthright or got mad making a right turn on a city street, any unprovoked violence act make you an animal.

This goddamn animal deserves nothing but death by the worst pain you can think of. If there is ANYONE who thinks otherwise then I respect your opinion but I don't care what you think. I want this guy and others like him to suffer and die.

This is my last post on this subject. I'm done.

Anonymous (1:43 PM on Fri Feb 22, 2008)

Very intense column, Michael!

KUDOS to U and to your mom for what you've become now. And let's all kick the asses of the Ronnie Williams in the world!

RandArrington (7:31 AM on Tue Feb 26, 2008)

I think I just found my Presidential candidate. Yeah baby!!!!