Isegoria

Caped Crusader Saves the Day in English Town:

A masked and caped do-gooder has been sweeping through an English town, performing good deeds and scattering terrified bad guys, a local newspaper reported.

The Kent and Sussex Courier said Friday it had received letters from “stunned residents” of the town of Tunbridge Wells, southeast of London, who saw the man in a brown mask and cape scare off hooligans and return a woman’s dropped purse.

“To my great surprise,” the paper quoted 21-year-old psychology student Ellen Neville as saying, “a masked man wearing a brown cape rushed past me to assist a woman who was having a bother with a group of youths.

“He swept in, broke up the commotion and ran off, leaving myself and the woman in a state of shock,” she said.

A man wrote to say he was being chased by some youths when the hero appeared and “shocked the gang so much they ran off.”

Another woman wrote to say the crusader had tapped her on her shoulder to return her purse.

“If only there were more people around with this kind-hearted spirit,” she said.

So how much is this caped crusader paying those kids to commit minor crimes he can stop?

According to A Rio de Janeiro Slum Credits Shadowy Vigilantes for Safety, there’s a little Gotham City in Brazil, the Rio das Pedras:

For Maria de Lourdes Luna, home is a one-room hut shared with five relatives. The stench of sewage fills the alleys, and refuse gushes past the shanties from an open ditch after a hard rain.

Yet for her and many others, the slum of Rio das Pedras is an urban utopia — one of the few Brazilian shantytowns, or favelas, not tormented by drugs and drug-related violence. Children fly kites and play ball free from fear of ricocheting bullets. People sleep with doors unlocked and windows ajar. Even petty crime is rare.

“There’s no better place to live. This is paradise,” says Ms. Luna, a 43-year-old housekeeper. “We can put up with anything — rats, floods, trash — as long as we’re spared drugs.”

Behind that tranquility and order, however, is a dark secret: Residents believe that a shadowy organization of civilian vigilantes, comprised of off-duty and retired policemen as well as ordinary citizens, keeps the peace by meting out extrajudicial killings to drug dealers and other lawbreakers. Alleged militia murders provide an ironic sense of comfort in a city so inured to drug-related violence that extreme measures aren’t considered extreme anymore.

I might trade a little more crime for a little less sewage in the streets.

Liberty and Justice for All presents another summary of Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom:

Nations that establish democracy without first guaranteeing their citizens freedom typically become what Zakaria terms “illiberal democracies.” During the 4th century B.C., while Athens enjoyed a golden age of democracy, its popular assembly voted to put Socrates to death for corrupting Athenian youth with philosophy. That was democratic, Zakaria writes, “but not liberal.” Post-revolutionary France was ruled by a democratic National Assembly, but the bloodbath it created during its reign of terror was profoundly illiberal. Today, Zakaria notes, Yasser Arafat is the only Arab leader who is chosen through “reasonably free elections.” But though democratic, the Palestinian Authority is not remotely liberal, as Western journalists who have been harassed by its functionaries will readily attest.
[...]
The problem with democratic governance, Zakaria argues, isn’t merely that it won’t automatically protect the freedom of its citizens. It’s also that it may well undermine freedom unless freedom has already been guaranteed through the prior establishment of an independent judiciary, a free press and other components of what Zakaria calls “constitutional liberalism.” (He uses the term “liberal” in its 19th-century sense, “tending to enhance the freedom of individuals and limit the power of government.”) Echoing James Madison and Alexis de Tocqueville, Zakaria writes that a majority will incline toward tyranny unless forced to accommodate certain individual and minority rights. It may also degenerate quickly into autocracy and dictatorship, a process that he notes is well under way in Russia and has played out many times in sub-Saharan Africa.