Furthermore, to achieve justice -- to deter, to exact retribution, to make whole the victim, or to heal the sick criminal, whichever one or more of these we take to be the goal of justice -- we must almost always respond to force with force. Taken in isolation that response will itself look like an initiation of force. Furthermore, to gather the evidence we need in most cases to achieve sufficient high levels of confidence -- whether balance of the probabilities, clear and convincing evidence, or beyond a reasonable doubt -- we often have to initiate force with third parties -- to compel them to hand over goods, to let us search their property, or to testify. If politics could be deduced this might be called the Central Theorem of Politics -- we can't properly respond to a global initiation of force without local initiations of force.
Is this a similar message to Penn Jillette saying:
"If you don’t pay your taxes and you don’t answer the warrant and you don’t go to court, eventually someone will pull a gun. Eventually someone with a gun will show up. "
or did I miss the boat?
Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are: