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It feels very natural to be swayed to cheer for the woman, to sympathize with that need for vengeance, and the kind of justice being served by the act. Indeed, it is a kind of justice, and I disagree with mike that it's 'no justice at all'. It's simply not the form of justice that fits our Western society. This is not to be relativistic, but rather to be flexible. Merely the fact that we can all sympathize with the woman and the cheering crowds, at least a some level, shows that it is a form of justice. Of course, it is not (in our society) state-sanctioned justice, which you, being the delightful conservative that you are, would place as the pinnacle of justice. However defining justice as 'that which the state apparatus sanctions' is a relativism of its own. Once court sentences prove to be ineffective or unbalanced, the true definition of justice becomes detached once again. I can appreciate the need for respect for the institutional apparatus of justice, however justice is something that originates in humans, not in institutions (just as religion comes from humans, not the church), and the obscuration of this fact clouds the true form of justice. whatever the hell that is.
Mind you, that is not an argument for the woman. I think that your view on justice, mike, is of a higher order than the impulse of the woman and the crowd (see, not relativistic). However it is a fact that the day to day going ons of ordinary people do not consistently reflect and live up to the high values endorsed constitutionally. This is bad in many respects but it also holds the whole system together on a micro level, the thousands of tit-for-tat occurences of justice that happen in our daily interactions.
My $1.24
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