Fear and Dignity
I’m probably as ambivalent as Reihan regarding the Joe Horn shootings in (natch) Texas, but I also enjoyed the bracing treatise on crime and self-protection. The bit about crime being an assault not only on property but also on dignity reminded me of a recent incident in my neighborhood, and the psychological guidance offered by the local intelligentsia.
A young woman, living alone about two blocks from me, was robbed in her home by two strangers, one of whom shot her in the forehead as she wept on her couch.
Naturally, the neighborhood went through a brief convulsion of fear before the suspects were caught. To mitigate the “irrational” response, and to preempt any anti-urban sentiment that might arise, one of our stalwart alt weeklies interviewed a local authority:
Well known UVA prof and urban planner Bill Lucy says even if crime does increase, city dwellers are statistically less likely to die suddenly than their country counterparts because traffic fatalities– far more common on winding country roads– are 2.6 times more likely than homicides.
Homicide by a stranger is even rarer, says Lucy, who believes it’s the randomness of the crime that inspires such fear.
“Those are scariest because they could happen to anyone at any time,” he says.
After reading this vapid equivalence between human predation and an auto accident, Jeffrey Snyder’s purple prose about the “tyranny of the elite” seems less hyperbolic. As A Nation of Cowards argues, homicide by a stranger is not “scarier” than a car crash because it’s “random.” People don’t fear crime more than country roads because it is more likely — they fear (and hopefully prevent) crime because it is categorically worse than an accident, both in the event and in prior contemplation. Being a victim of crime is categorically more worthy of dread because it entails enslavement to another human’s ill will.
There is a reasonable and humane way to understand the danger of violent crime, but it does not involve flinging oneself upon the mercy of statistics.
Ah, but you’re engaging in a little deceptive switch. Not all robberies result in homicide; in fact, the vast majority don’t. So the question of whether or not to fight back is not necessarily a question of homicide prevention. As such, while characteristically biting, your attacks on the opinions of that professor are little better than a non sequitur.
What about that professor, anyway? Is he wrong, as an empirical matter? No. I don’t think that there is anything untoward or dishonest about reminding people of the simple fact that they have significantly less reason to fear death from crime than they do from an auto accident. Whether or not something is “categorically more worthy of dread because it entails enslavement to another human’s ill will” is an open question. But whatever your perspective on that question, I fail to see how it has anything to say at all about what people should do. Fear produces irrationality, and that irrationality has consequences for public policy, like the allocation of resources to crime prevention relative to automobile accident avoidance. And in those cases, empiricism has to trump emotions, however fair they are, because the rate at which one thing causes death in comparison to another can be quantified, and the comparative horrors of death by accident vs. death by homicide can’t.
Finally, I also don’t see how Joe Horn connects to the larger question in the way that you and Reihan seem to think it does. Do you really think that by shooting those two men in the back, Joe Horn has made that community or the world any safer?
— Freddie · Dec 14, 04:14 AM · #
Freddie,
You must be the Kantian that Reihan mentioned in his post.
A victim of violence is always going to be making his or her decisions in the particular, where the collective questions of resource allocation and public policy break down. Lucy’s error (and yours) is forcing a policy epistemology on private actors — y’all are imposing a sort of office on private citizens.
The citizen/official problem cuts both ways — I don’t believe Joe Horn had any right to shoot those two robbers in order to make “that community or the world any safer.” In one sense, the line between vigilantism and home defense is the line between a policy actor and a private one. We regard vigilantes as unjust because they assume an illegitimate office.
I believe there’s a necessary balance here: if you don’t want the Joe Horns of the world deputizing themselves, don’t expect private citizens to assess threats based strictly on aggregate probability as you’d have officials do.
— Matt Frost · Dec 14, 04:53 AM · #
This isn’t so much a comment on the post, as it is a U.Va student and (I guess) C’ville resident saying hello to another C’ville resident.
Hello.
— Jamelle · Dec 14, 06:42 AM · #
I don’t intend to be too rude about this, since I think you have the more reasonable of the two perspectives here, Matt. But professional pride demands that I ask: what exactly do you think ‘Kantian’ means?
— Justin · Dec 14, 07:54 AM · #
I have to say, I’m 100% behind Joe Horn. At least in principle. The facts of the case remain unclear, but as to the question of whether one should be allowed to defend a neighbor’s home with lethal force when one is allowed to do so for his own home, my answer is a resounding yes.
This actually ties in very well with the arguments about the military that we’ve been having below a different post. Just as a country that stops being proud of itself stops having a good enough military, a country that stops being proud of itself stops enforcing its own laws properly, since it doesn’t believe in them anymore. This is what is happening with crime in Europe, and it’s nice to see some people standing up in the US.
— PEG · Dec 14, 08:51 AM · #
Of course without question Joe Horn made that area much safer (as long as he faces no prosecution).
Criminals look for weakness, avoid places and actions where they will find resistance. This is why Mike Tyson at 17 mugged old ladies in their 70’s and 80’s. Not say, Bodybuilders on the way to the gym.
In the real world where people live, and would like both not to be robbed, and more importantly be robbed in a home invasion where it’s a roll of the dice if the home invaders will kill or not, rape or not, the inhabitants, Joe Horn is to be celebrated. Because shooting those men, in the front or the back, makes the whole place safer.
Because the men were illegal aliens with long rap sheets, and “immune” from any real legal consequence by virtue of extreme mobility and “off the grid” living as illegal aliens, short of shooting them nothing would happen. The Justice system certainly did nothing prior to the shooting to arrest and deport the men where they would have been Guatemala’s problem. Other criminal illegal aliens in the habit of breaking into homes will view coverage of the event and look for easier prey elsewhere. The way Mike Tyson didn’t bother with bodybuilders but instead retirement homes and elderly women.
Broadly speaking, the lessening of swift and deadly response by average people has made criminality a larger threat. IMHO this is an intentional action by elites who make constant war on the people and use criminals as one aspect of that war. This is to be expected, Machiavelli noted the same tendency in the nobles of his day.
Police are of course useless to prevent or deter crimes, unless you have a compact city and large, fairly professional police force like NYC. Density and urbanization allow police to just stand around crime-prone areas to deter crime in say, New York or Boston. Suburbanization and rural America does not have that luxury and MUST depend on “vigilantism” or let’s be honest, ordinary people shooting criminals (in the back or otherwise, who cares?) to deter crime from focused and dangerous individuals.
— Jim Rockford · Dec 14, 08:58 AM · #
By the way, I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be Kantian to support Joe Horn. Act as though the maxim of your actions could be taken as a universal law. I’m pretty sure it’d be a good universal law if we all defended our neighbors’ houses from burglars when they themselves are unable to do so.
And as for the other categorical imperative — act as though other people were an end in themselves, not a means —, well, again, Joe Horn did. He didn’t act as though the burglars were an end in themselves, but then again, neither did those guys toward anyone. However, he did act as though his NEIGHBOR was an end in himself. He had no personal interest in defending his neighbor’s property.
I think Joe Horn passes the Kant test with flying colors.
— PEG · Dec 14, 09:03 AM · #
Justin,
My kartoon Kantian is one who, as PEG suggests, tests moral questions on the basis of universal applicability.
I hope your profession survives my affront.
— Matt Frost · Dec 14, 02:15 PM · #
Freddie is not a Kantian then. He is saying, correctly, that we should make policy contingent on the particular circumstance, in America, that car crashes are more likely than homicides by strangers. Kant is not interested in particular circumstances of any kind.
— Brendan · Dec 14, 05:19 PM · #
I should also add that most individuals are more rational than you give them credit for, outside of moments of intense fear. About a month ago, right around the same time, I was robbed at gunpoint and my roommate fell off his bike and broke his arm. My experience was deeply unpleasant for more or less the reason you describe, and while it was happening I would probably have wanted to trade places in my roommate. I would have regretted that later, however, since my roommate’s arm is still in a sling while I am down about $20. It would be stupid of me to take more precautions against being robbed than against falling off a bike.
— Brendan · Dec 14, 05:24 PM · #
I should note that, despite the platitudes about citizens “standing up” and how America’s failure to do so leaves it a more dangerous place, America has been the beneficiary of a long and steady decline in the general crime rate and the violent crime rate for close to the length of my lifetime, and while there has been a small upswing the last few years, that seems to be more of a correction than a major change. The fact is that America, from most perspectives, is a remarkably safe and crime free place to live, and has been improving.
I will never begrudge anyone thinking and feeling irrationally following a harrowing incident, nor do I question the legitimacy of those emotions. But public policy has to be determined by the mind, by rationality, and by empiricism.
— Freddie · Dec 15, 02:41 AM · #