Shoulda called the guy that got the affluenza teen off. That guy definitely majored in justice
What the judge believes is not the same as the letter of the law. The judge has to enforce the law as it is written.
Thatās what Iām getting at. If the judge believes he acted in self-defense, that is a legal opinion. But he also broke the law by not retreating. If you donāt retreat, you still have the right to defend yourself, obviously since no one would say if you donāt retreat you have to allow a criminal to hurt or kill you, but you also donāt have the right to defend yourself. I used to think the stand your ground laws were bad but the more I think about it they make sense. If I can run away and choose to run away that is probably the best and safest choice but if I donāt want to run then why should I not have that choice when dealing with a criminal? Especially when whether or not you had the option to retreat can be open to interpretation. Telling someone they have to turn their back on an assailant and run is ridiculous. This guy was attacked by three people, he has to assume he can outrun all three?
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Apparently a detail that was left out was that after he was attacked he ran outside to stab one of the attackers. If thatās true I can see how it would change things.
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As promised, an answer to when the UK became an incubator for stupid ideas.
As a start, this isnāt a scholarly piece, so I shanāt be rigorously citing, everything I say can be validated, but I wonāt be doing it in the body of the text.
So the source for the UKās malaise, and now, likely, irrevocable decline are multiple, and beyond the scope of a forum post, so I shall stick to the major ones:
- Societal defeat.
- Foreign policy.
- Domestic policy and the collapse of traditional safeguards.
To deal with the first, the cause of the UKās decline can be traced to the most catastrophic event Europe ever faced, namely, WW1.
The UK, upon entering what may well have been a minor regional war, primarily fought by the Tsar and the Kaiser, nearly destroyed itself. It entered the war on a weak casus belli and, as a result, depleted its treasury and lost the best and brightest of that generation (how good they were is incalculable, but one could scarcely imagine a Christmas football game happening in a European war now).
The psychic shock of this disaster is immense. Anyone who goes to the UK now can visit any small town and see the names of the dead in any small town. Villages lost all their young, pubs were emptied by the rush to war, and those who survived returned as a scarred generation, destroyed by what they had seen.
This was followed by a war wherein they narrowly lost due to American cash and help, against a far darker foe, and with a far more reticent populace. (The American fault in the decline shall be dealt with shortly)
So, to close out this point, imagine having lost millions of your best and brightest and having, as a global empire, to go begging to the USA for help, and then having your place in the world dismantled as a result.
- Foreign policy.
In order for the US to help us, conditions were attached. Among these conditions, was that we payed all our war debts (unique among allies or combatants) . The US hostility to the British empire at this time cannot be understated, and the āGreat Delugeā details the Wilson governmentās outright hostility to the UK in return for aid.
This culminated in Suez, where the UK was broken (and nearly declared war upon) by the failed attempt to revive some imperial splendor, and by US foreign policy. The effect of this on British morale cannot be understated, and it has a huge effect on the social conditions, and subsequent domestic policy that followed in its wake.
- Domestic policy and the collapse of traditional safeguards.
This brings us to the substantive portion. Wherein all the above culminated in what the UK is now. After Suez, the weakness of the UK political class was revealed, and it has never recovered. This led to a deluge of effects, the precise end of which is unknowable.
In 1968 (The UKās summer of love) a quasi communistic, and socially radical wave breaks on the UK. Rock and roll, peace and love, f-the man, etc, etc.
What those who lived their discovered was that all the foundation stones of the UK (the parliament, the Anglican church, the military) were all weak, and easily pushed over. Their restraint on British society was gone.
Combine this with the economic doldrums that our war debt caused, and there was a recipe for disaster. The economy was in tatters and the old reliable institutions were flabby and weak.
Then we get to Thatcher. Thatcher implemented a rigorous program to end the disaster, but this had a price. Thatcher pursued a full free market system with no regards to the social conditions she destroyed. She fought overmighty unions, but destroyed even the coal mines that HAD NOT GONE ON STRIKE.
She also privatized the (highly functional) rail system and sold it to the highest bidder. She also dynamited the rail lines so that this could not be undone. This loss of rail and industry hollowed out UK towns outside the urban areas in a way that has never been recovered from (indeed, it may be totally irrevocable)
After Thatcher left, and her weakened Tory party was booted out of office, who entered on the scene?
che
Anthony Blair, a child of 1968, and a self admitted Trotsky-ite. Blair did not pursue economic radicalism, but social radicalism. He centralized the police, he made the cabinet a psuedo presidency (with less checks and balances) and he closed the grammar schools.
It was considered a truism that the UK up to before College was as good as a lower level college degree. The grammar school system was a merit based system that, before it was wrecked, had 50% attendance from the working class. It was the greatest tool the UK ever had for elevating the poor. Blair destroyed it, and replaced it with a ācomprehensiveā system that meant you went to where the nearest school was. This meant that education became decided by geography, rather than ability, and our class mobility has tanked since.
It has also led to the schools becoming far worse. The Scottish school system recently reduced the mathematics grade pass to 34%, because so many students couldnāt hit any passing grade, and that is one example of many.
All of this pales in comparison to what was done with the police. The UK Peelite police force was the best in the world. It had beat cops on every street that acted as an effective crime prevention unit. Investigation was rarely needed, and they swore their oath to the law, not the government.
(I should note, that Blair was not the originator of the police decline, which started much earlier, but for the sake of brevity, I shall forego all the reasons why it is in the state it is in now)
The police now, do not operate as beat cops, are far more centralized and, as a result, far less reactive to local conditions. They have fallen so far that many laws are, as admitted by the MET, simply not being enforced.
This has led us to now, where the UK cops punish the ātechnically guiltyā, and cannot catch criminals. Crime is rising, and they are incapable of dealing with it, because they have lost all the old tools and methods of doing so.
The current political class is incapable of fixing the problems and often deny they exist.
The political class now, mostly, does not do anything other than put band-aids on problems we have, and the populace follows suit.
So to sum up:
Two world wars and economic collapse, followed by a radical social revolution (which is ongoing) and a hollowed out police force and education system are why the UK now breeds bad ideas.
Edit: derail over.
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1000% this. fucking this.
@Any legal minds (or anyone), how does the law determine whether or not retreat is an option in any given scenario?
To me, retreat is an option over defense when the ability to retreat is GUARENTEED (or at least a much higher chance of success than the defense). If I have a .1% chance of being shot/stabbed/outrun by some guy as Iām retreating, then retreating isnāt a valid option unless I somehow know the odds of dying in the fight are higher than dying in the retreat, but even then.
At least your cuisine is still the envy of the world.
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Tripe, spam, and suet. Orwellās delight.
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Even in a Stand Your Ground state, you should retreat if that seems like viable option. Any decent, reasonable person would do everything they reasonably could to avoid a conflict that could end in the use of deadly force, and a prosecutor could still use that against you like āZecarlo obviously thought he was Charles Bronson in death wish, otherwise he would have walked away when he had the chance.ā
Also, not surprised that there may be more to the story. There are plenty of cases where a case of justifiable self defense was lost because, in the heat of the moment, the defender went on the attack, after he had gotten the upper hand.
The problem is, often times, itās just you and your assailant. Nobody else knows what really happened, not the police, not the judge, not the jury. Itās your word, the forensic evidence, and, if youāre lucky, a well placed surveillance camera that tells the story. If itās just your word an overzealous or politically motivated prosecutor can easily say that you should have run out of the back door when you had the chance.
Thatās why Stand Your Ground is such a great law, it takes some of the Monday morning quarterbacking out of the equation. You still have to act in a reasonable manner, you still have to act in proportion to the threat (you canāt respond with deadly force to a non-deadly threat), you still have to be the innocent party and the threat still has to be imminent.
I highly recommend The Law of Self Defense, by Andrew Branca, great book, heās also appeared on many podcasts (mostly firearms related).
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My father was right. Kids are getting dumber.
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Iāll bet you 3 to 1 that ten years from now at least one of those kids are in the NRA. 5 to 1 that at least one accidentally shoots him/her/zir-self or someone else in that photo.
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So when an antifa group calls their opponents ābetaā (by inference they are the alpha) do they realize what theyāre saying? An alpha lion holds all the power, is male, has a harem of females, uses violence to keep everyone in line etcā¦ hardly progressive.
That canāt be what they mean. Perhaps they were calling conservatives betas:
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āBrothers sisters and othersā is the highlight for me.
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That and the reflective gear.
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Hahaha, god thatās amazing!
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Iāve got one of these stupid things in my kitchen that just refuses to die. Wife bought it like 3 years ago and it just takes up counter space.
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They look almost exactly like the punk street gang in Death Wish 3!
lololol!
Shit I watch this movie all the time because of itās comedic value. These idiots are actually taking themselves seriously.
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Looks like he was beaten up inside the store, the assault stopped, and then he ran outside and stabbed one of the guys. Thatās not self-defense. In fact, I highly doubt a āStand your groundā statute would help him if that is accurate. The legal system in this country typically doesnāt allow for private retribution.
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