Vigilantism is Justified when the Government Fails to Enforce the Law

I will just move down the flow... Starting with his argument on my criterion, he openly admits that revolution is a good idea, but that vigilantism should come first to stabilize society. I have two arguments on this 1) Vigilantism could fail. As I proved in my contention 2, vigilantism could fail and thus it wouldn't be able to stabilize the community. If carried out by someone who doesn't know what they are doing or are rather brutal in their actions, they could cause harm to society rather than helping it. My opponent just automatically believes that vigilantism will work and that is a major flaw in his argumentation. 2) It would be rather ridiculous to say that we should wait to revolt until after society has stabilized. The government is constantly failing us, but we should wait to replace it until we reach complete anarchy via vigilantism. It doesn't make any sense to wait to revolt if the government fails us all the time, because we would constantly have to resort to vigilantism, society would never become stable and we would never have the chance to revolt. We need to either revolt or become vigilantes, and, as I've shown and will continue to show, vigilantism is harmful to society and thus we need to revolt against an unsuccessful government. On my contention one, since my opponent wants a definition of revolution, and I reserved the right to clarify, I define revolution as "the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed." (Merriam Webster Online) So since it is one government replacing another, the people will put in place another, presumably, functioning government. And this is something that is simply NOT also applied to vigilantism. Vigilantism is overriding and surpassing the government. Revolution is replacing a government. That means that there is a claim to a process, replacing it with a government and not lack there of, so anarchy is out of the question. Moreover, you claim that a vigilante "must actually enforce THE LAW, not his own skewed version of justice. Otherwise he is not a person taking the law into his own hands but somebody deciding what is the law." You're trying to bend everything in your favor. According to your definition of vigilantism, the individual takes the law into their own hands, apprehending and punishing criminals. No where does it set any boundaries about how the individual apprehends and punishes them. What if a vigilante tortures and kills innocent people that may know where to find the criminal, and when he/she finds the criminal, what's to stop them from torturing or killing the criminal themselves? Now, although that is absolutely worst case scenario, the possibility is not beneficial to society. Going even further, if the vigilante was personally hurt by the original crime, they would be more than likely to take it a step too far. Going on to my contention two, he mentions that this is basically a pointless argument. Two things on this 1) Examples in history are the best argumentation because it's happened and we can see the consequences of said action. 2) This example is relevant to the resolution. The government has failed to capture the top terrorists in the world and so this man took it upon himself, as a vigilante, to capture terrorists and failed miserably. Terrorists are worse than the average murderer and rapist that we may be talking about in this resolution because their driving force is to inspire fear by killing many innocent people. This is a prime example of what we should be debating in this resolution, but my opponent just wishes to wave it off as he has no refutation for it. Moving to the Affirmative side... Going back to your definition of vigilantism, once again, the vigilante will apprehend and punish the criminal. I can't see anywhere it says anything, even remotely, close to trying the person in question. How are you deterring crime if you punish a person that is potentially innocent? Furthermore, this is going back to the arguments that I have mentioned before about punishment. It could be too light or too heavy for the crime that is committed and thus it is having either no effect or negative effects on society. I hate to say it, but my opponent has failed to achieve the only burden that he has set for himself. There are so many things that could go wrong with vigilantism, under-punishment, over-punishment, punishing the wrong person, hurting people along the way, etc, that the only way my opponent can achieve his burden is if the vigilante is perfect. If a single one of these things go wrong, the vigilante is having negative effects on society and isn't providing a net security. By saying that every vigilante is perfect is completely one-sided and we need to look to a medium for this debate. None of my arguments are flawed on my opponent's contention one or two. He argues this by mentioning that if a police officer is part of the police department, then he can't be a policeman anymore. This is just a ridiculous argument. The police officer is employed by the government and follows the rules and regulations that are set by the government. And even if a vigilante works in a group, the punishment will ultimately be up to the individual. However, when a group is acknowledge to have power and is accepted by the presiding form of government, as in your example, then it is a peaceful revolution of power. The police system, a form of government, is being replaced by another form of government, the so-called vigilantes. Thus you have provided an example of a peaceful revolution rather than a group of vigilantes. On your contention 1, I have proven time in and time out that it is not preserving the social order and thus you have not achieved your burden. Now your contention 2, I want this argument settled. Vigilantism does NOT equal revolution. Vigilantes think that they are better than the government, and thus don't need it, and revolution is replacing a government with another one, as they know that they need one. My opponent continuously says that he's right, but provides no logical backing for any of his arguments. Vigilantism is the first step to anarchy because they attempt to prove that government isn't needed, and thus it is not attempting to create a legitimate government. On the contention 3, I will first start with the Wal-Mart argument. All you are basically saying here is that I'm right. When people think that Wal-Mart is no longer legitimate, they form a social monopoly, stop going to Wal-Mart and would create their own store, sound familiar? That's because it's REVOLUTION, not vigilantism. Vigilantism in this example would be a man walking through the store and striking down prices. Moving on to the second part of his contention 3, he automatically believes that self-preservation is equal to communal preservation. If that was true, then cooperation among different stores would exist. The executives at Wal-Mart want people to shop there and nowhere else, basically, it's self-preservation. Does that mean that their actions are beneficial to Target, Shopko or K-Mart? No, therefore self-preservation, an argument that you have had throughout your case, is not equal to communal preservation. Since vigilantism can provide several negative effects and doesn't necessarily give people their due, or deter other criminals for example, we can only achieve justice on the Negative side of the resolution. If the government fails, it should be replaced by a community working together to replace it, and not having an individual, or few individuals, take the law into their own hands. A single man being the judge, jury and executioner is unjust and thus I can only see a Negative ballot. Thank you and I will await my opponent's response.