> Aside from the validity of the charges, this manner of social justice never ever works for the people who try it.
I dunno, the Pentagon Papers had fairly significant political effects, I think. Stealing government documents and having them published overseas to embarrass/expose the state's actions was also one of the more effective tools used by opposition groups in Eastern Europe and the USSR.
Do you really think stealing a state's documents is an attack on "freedom-loving people everywhere"? Is this always true? The Eastern-block dissents hated freedom, and damaged the cause of freedom by stealing/leaking Stasi documents?
I could certainly agree that the Stasi is much worse than the UK government, so maybe you could draw a line between a certain level of viciousness of the security state, past which document-theft becomes justified. But I don't see how you could make a blanket statement that it's never justified.
I would also make a distinction between breaking into a person's house and breaking into a government's office. Breaking into someone's home has a certain personal-threat aspect to it, and I'd consider homes to have a bit of a sacrosanct element that I wouldn't extend to state offices. So, probably not in favor of combatting a corrupt police force by breaking into the sheriff's home. But, combatting a corrupt police force by breaking into a police station and grabbing their files, as happened recently in Egypt, seems a bit different.
I dunno, the Pentagon Papers had fairly significant political effects, I think. Stealing government documents and having them published overseas to embarrass/expose the state's actions was also one of the more effective tools used by opposition groups in Eastern Europe and the USSR.
Do you really think stealing a state's documents is an attack on "freedom-loving people everywhere"? Is this always true? The Eastern-block dissents hated freedom, and damaged the cause of freedom by stealing/leaking Stasi documents?
I could certainly agree that the Stasi is much worse than the UK government, so maybe you could draw a line between a certain level of viciousness of the security state, past which document-theft becomes justified. But I don't see how you could make a blanket statement that it's never justified.
I would also make a distinction between breaking into a person's house and breaking into a government's office. Breaking into someone's home has a certain personal-threat aspect to it, and I'd consider homes to have a bit of a sacrosanct element that I wouldn't extend to state offices. So, probably not in favor of combatting a corrupt police force by breaking into the sheriff's home. But, combatting a corrupt police force by breaking into a police station and grabbing their files, as happened recently in Egypt, seems a bit different.