Hacker News Reader

Comment by cynicalkane | Hacker News Reader

That's not what I said.

What I said is that I'm not obligated to "reason" with someone that illegally demands my attention. Maybe abortion doctors should be obligated to "reason" with pro-life protestors, to open a conversation? Hey, a lot of time those guys aren't even breaking the law.

What the OP calls being an "uptight techie" I call being an ordinary human being in an allegedly civilized country.

View on HN

You seemed to miss the guys point. If you park somewhere illegally and someone blocks you in, getting upset that they are doing something illegal while ignoring the fact that you are doing something similarly illegal everyday is pretty weird imo...

Not to not-pick, but just riding the bus that is illegally stopped probably isn't itself illegal (although the bus driver would likely be breaking some law or other).

Sure, but to say "wow this is totally ridiculous! what those people are doing is illegal" while never caring the least bit about the illegal thing they're taking part in is just so ridiculously self absorbed, which is kind of the root of the thing people are upset about.

It's a pretty generic 'taking the law in your own hand' argument though. If you illegally double park and as consequence, I illegally shoot you and your whole family, debating what I did is besides the point since the real debate should be about why you double parked.

That analogy is just a tiny bit more extreme then what actually happened.

Ya, it's a ridiculous example but I'm just pointing out the difficulty of codifying vigilantism into law. If illegally killing people who double park is not appropriate, is stealing their TV appropriate? Is hacking their email account appropriate? Who can appropriately be a vigilante? Is it appropriate for a victim who suffered physical injuries? Is it appropriate for a victim who felt offended? Is it appropriate for an eye witness? Is it appropriate for someone who saw it online?

This was a peaceful protest, not vigilante justice. Some people were unable to get to work on time. Where's the outrage about union workers not being able to get to work during a picketed protest?

...are you being serious?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com