With all the restraint that I have in my soul, the answer is no. All too often, we view on the televisions and read in the newspapers, stories of innocent people that have fallen victim to another's injustice and lack of humanity. We are also bombarded with the fact that today's law enforcement professionals are given less and less latitude with the way criminals are dealt with. Despite all these sobering realizations, we, as a society, should still put our faith in the system of justice we have adopted.
I feel the primary reason people develop the need for "vigilante" justice is from the lack of understanding we have for today's police. It is also inherent in human nature to make right the things we see wrong, even if the law says you can't. The laws that are in place are designed to control and govern our conduct. The problem arises when you see that laws only control those that abide by them, not the few individuals that do what they want and take from the rest of society.
Everyone in the world has, at one time or another, felt rage and anger about the way a criminal was treated, thinking the justice system was too lenient or did not have the power to bring deserved justice. But this unfair awareness is the very heart of what makes it work. It sets boundaries and limits on our conduct. It allows us to call ourselves civilized and modern. It allows us to sleep at night, knowing that justice has limits on the measures it will go to punish a person.
We fight against all our natural instincts as humans when we take personal responsibility to the next level and make the conscious decision to allow the criminal justice system to follow rules of engagement with those that have no rules. We must put our fsith, no matter how undeserving, in the court system, and let them adjudicate according to the rules that govern us, the rules that seperate us from them.
It is not an issue of if we think vigilante justice is right or wrong. It is not an issue of moral turpitude or ethics. It is the the fact that in order for the system to work, the majority of our society has to let the system be. We have to accept the fact that it is imperfect and flawed. We have to embrace the fact that we know justice does not mean every wrong will be made right, but that it means we have accepted the injustice in exchange for the liberty and freedom that the American people have come to need like the air that we breathe. It then becomes an obligation of citizenship, a choice that is readily accepted.