Tuesday, November 23, 2021

They Say It Like It's A Bad THing

 I've been watching the news, and I love the English language.  So, let's look at the word, Vigil.  According to the Google dictionary.

vigil (noun) - a period of keeping awake during the time usually spent asleep, especially to keep watch or pray.

That  doesn't sound so bad.  A period of time to keep watch or pray.   I have kept vigils during my lifetime, for either personal, family or community reasons.  So, the act of keeping a vigil makes one vigilant.

Vigilant (adjective) - keeping careful watch for possible danger or difficulties.

But, if we put an "e" on the end of the word, it becomes something totally different. 

Vigilante (noun) - a member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority

And yet, we see this being played out on the left-wing media.

 

I don't think that the description of "vigilante" describes what we saw at all.  Kyle Rittenhouse was keeping a vigil over a friend's property when he was attacked and forced to defend himself.  That does not make him a vigilante.

4 comments:

Stuart said...

If legal authority is vested in the government and governmental authority emanates from the consent of the governed it necessarily follows that, when citizens undertake the enforcement of laws when the government abdicates its charge, vigilantism is good and proper in a free society.
We see many examples of this in early American (Colonial) history. We the people need to stop being cuckold about these things.

Old NFO said...

He was vigilant. Not the 'e'...

Mike-SMO said...

The Left aims to control the population by gaining control of the government. They are terrified of a "vigilante" movement where the population enforces the laws when the government will not or can not do it. "Self defense" is an abomination since they can not conceive of any resistance to their control of the law and to their toleration of burning and looting by Leftist/Democratic/Progressive Storm Troopers. A vigilante is an opposition to their control of the government, thus it is "bad". Indeed, "vigilante justice" can be chaotic and erratic, but the Democratic concern is that it is a point of resistance to their power and control and therfore it is "bad". It is just another example of the distortion of word definitions to support Leftist objectives.

Drew458 said...

We are the legal authority. Police are merely our agents, hired to do this part of our job for us. Nobody can "take the law into their own hands" because the law has never left those hands.

Up until the 1850s there were no police anywhere. Then they grew in urban areas. Gotta wonder if the demise of Westerns is related to the softening of society. Cowboys and frontiersmen took care of things themselves.