All right, YOU have Super Powers. Are you a Hero or a Vigilante?

I'm not talking about small time criminals when I say we need vigilante justice. I'm not referring to burglars and carjackers.

I'm talking about the ones that turn our system into a joke. The ones who have a lawyer that can wrap a case in red tape until it suffocates. The ones who laugh at conviction because they'll overturn in an appeal. The ones that buy cops and trade politicians over poker games. The ones that create the conditions spawning all the lower levels of crime.

These kind need to be dealt with. Harshly. Decisively.

And this is why my main started making plans to assassinate Dr. Vahzilok after arresting him ten times.

ash, this mindset can get you into all kinds of trouble, are you tossing "notable financial institution" employees out of windows? lets get down to it, outside of a few notable political war criminals and normally stupid street level thugs who only exist as a side effect of economic issues , you cant punch a guy till he is gainfully employed, educated and invested in the well-being of the community, i've tried. the big picture bad guys are largely white collar, so what do you do? if ,as you said, no legal method of redress exists, how do you deal with a banker who financially destroys a swath of people's lives. beat him to death, torture him? congrats, you did jack squat for the victims, only taught the others that they need to be a bit sneakier, and reduced justice to the level of common thuggery. Light yagami would call you a poser. and the best part is, the big corporate entities are so used to working through proxies already, you are not going to find the real people responsible for anything, they perfected manufacturing deniability before you were born.

I'll admit, this is a comics board, we tend to associate heroes with a series of overblown pro-wrestlers "fighting" crime, a few in here broke from that and indicated that the real world would be more about natural disasters, fires, mine collapses seem to be in vogue lately, and how about massive disease epidemics?. hell, lets be honest and look at the damages caused by economic exploitation... you cant exactly punch that out. and removing the petty dictators, in the real world, tends to lead to other criminals violently fighting to filling the power vacuum. Im afraid a superhero in the real world would become disillusioned and jaded pretty fast, and would lose their mind within a year, you either become a glory hog, losing any real empathy for the people, or you see how many people you cant help and break down like schindler at the end of schindlers list, you cant sleep, you have to go as fast as you can, and you still could have saved one more life.

heh, this reminds me of an old episode of some silly crime drama, a police chief was walking through a prison weight area and remarked that if he had his way, these gusy who are pumping iron and gettign stronger and faster would be given tv's potato chips and allowed to vegetate, when they got out they would be too fat and lazy to get in trouble...maybe thats the key, free mmo subscriptions for all violent felons. you cant mug when you are raiding. and you cant outrun cops when you were sitting for 50 hours a week eating hot pockets. and make sure the games are really inaccurate, give them bad advice how to hold a gun, unrealistic fighting moves, i think we are on to something here!!!!

I recall reading in one of those list things that the hughes brothers probably saved thousands of lives by showing gang-bangers shooting guns sideways, get them that anime where the kid shoots holding the guns upside down!

Well, that's where we get into a different definition of crime, justice, and change, where the source of the law and ability of the law come into question.

I'd argue that, based on your definitions of a hero, and the situations given, a true hero that worked within the constraints of the law would have to adopt another additional role- that of a true revolutionary. Revolution need not be violent... in fact, in a true and open democracy that offers a legitimate method to seek change, violence would not be the hero's path. The hero would work to change the legal structure that's being abused, then enforce that legal structure.

However, in the case of Cole's- where the man makes the laws, exploits the people protected by the laws, and gives no legitimate recourse of merit to remedy those injustices (the token governing council cannot make the structural changes at the root of the injustice) then violent revolution is STILL a "heroic" option.

I'm making a sharp distinction here. This "heroic" revolutionary is not a vigilante.

A true heroic revolutionary advocates is not interested in imposing punishment on those that acted unjustly but legally under the old regime-- his focus is on replacing the old structure, assuring that those abuses won't continue. Once those new laws are established, people are judged based on them. A revolutionary thus seeks to ESTABLISH, then ENFORCE, a rule of law. Also of note-- I'd argue that he cannot solely establish the law. As a member of a society, he has a right to have a say in how that governing society is ruled, but that voice has no more individual weight than any of the others. He may participate in the public discourse and his stature will likely add weight to his words, but he MUST seek a legitimate rule of law adopted by the people for the people.

A Vigilante fighting in a revolution, on the other hand, is just ENFORCING his rules without authority or establishment. He would seek to punish/kill Cole and his minions for their "crimes" first, then possibly, if he finds himself on the throne, he might ESTABLISH them.


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Of course, then there's the behavior after the revolution, where the lines may start to blur. Does a vigilante that writes his own moral code into law now become "heroic" since he's working within the law? How do you handle the previous regime? Do you hold their past acts to the new laws? Do you appeal to a greater "crimes against humanity" cause? Do you give them equal and proportionate voice in the legislative process or barr them from public participation?

The big challenge with vigilantism here is that these cases are so challenging BECAUSE the evidence of guilt can be spotty. These guys, by definition, can be pretty slick.

Our criminal justice system is based on the understanding best summed by Sir William Blackstone "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

While this can be frustrating, a vigilante seeking out these people is by definition working with a wider margin of error. What if he doesn't have all the facts? What if he's blinded by an idealogue? What if he's intentionally fed false information?

Will you, the vigilante, faced with PROOF that you killed/punished a truly innocent man, turn yourself over for murder, or are you, too, turning the legal system into a joke?

WWRD

What would Rorschach do?

In a completely serious note, this is why I really enjoyed Going Rogue was it was a good first attempt at creating that same kind of moral quandary that we was presented in The Watchmen. /em thumbsup

I'm making a banner for that.

You don't understand. I'm not locked up in the Zig with them. They're locked... hrm. Everyone's escaped from the Zig. Bad example.

To a true vigilante, the legal system is a joke surely?

I suspect Rorschach would grunt, mark it up to experience, and try to avoid doing it again; he has no respect for the law, no-one outside of his own head has the moral authority to judge him.

I'm seeing a lot of wriggling here about the definition of what a vigilante is. People saying they'd fight crime, but wouldn't be vigilantes.

It was my understanding that a vigilante was someone who worked outside of the law - ie almost every superhero who has been committed to paper. As much as we cheer Batman on when he punches the Joker, what he's doing isn't exactly legal is it? You aren't actually allowed to break a shoplifter's arm, even when Citizen Arresting. They've added a nice get-out in CoH where all heroes are deputised, but even cops get into trouble for beating up suspects - even if they catch them red-handed.

Again, the trouble with that is the state actor doctrine.

A good argument for the police, where I can resign if conscience demands, over the army.

Still, I think the problem in Watchmen's Vietnam isn't the Comedian, it's Dr. Manhattan. He provides an "I Win" button for the United States, and power corrupts collectively as well as individually. The Comedian, despite being a dick, doesn't really do that. Also, Alan Moore thinks the United States is significantly more corrupt than I think it is, so in his mind the gap between reality and Watchmen is smaller than in mine.

If I ever actually find myself in a truly corrupt society, that would change my choices (or convince me to move); if I lived in Praetorian Earth, I would have fewer qualms about being a "vigilante" (fewer moral qualms anyway, I might be more afraid for my own skin). But I don't think the United States (or Canada or anywhere I know of in the EU) justifies violent defiance of the law. Even if I had the power to unmake current government institutions, and create new ones, I'm not confident I'd do a significantly better job to justify the violence and pain caused by the upheaval. In terms of reforming society, I suspect I could do a better job as Bruce Wayne (using money and influence) than Batman (using violence).

There's a reason I said I don't want to be Emperor of the World, even if I have the super-powers to demand it. Can you design institutions to prevent corruption, even among people on whom the institutions are forcibly imposed? Or do you simply plan to knock-off people who, in your sole opinion, are corrupt? How do you tell? You're not the only person in the world who dislikes corruption; if it were easy to unambiguously identify, it wouldn't exist.

If my powers can be reverse engineered to be granted to others, that opens a whole new can of worms, but that's not usually possible. And if it is, I'm probably going to go back to the "the patents are MINE" category.

If they want to use me for morally bankrupt black-ops, they'd be stupid. If I see something that really offends my conscience, I can always back out and/or go public; they can't easily pressure or "disappear" me like a normal operative, because I'm a super-hero. Also, I don't think that sort of thing goes on too often in real life (not that governments don't do shady or illegal things, but usually not in massive conspiracies). That sort of thing might make a good plot ("I'll play along until I can get the proof on my Bat-Camera").