I guess people are saying that they believe there is such a thing as an ethical murder in the streets. Of course in any form of ethics vacuum chamber this can’t stand. But in the real world where children are bombed for the sake of some asshole’s religion, where the president boasts he could get away with murder in the street and courts confirm this, in a world where sick people are left to suffer to boost a share price, then, THEN an act like this becomes a reasonable response to an unreasonable world.

Maybe someone better educated can tell me what ethics scholars have to say about how an ethical actor should behave in a system where ethics have utterly broken down. Right now, the crowd is saying “like that guy.”

I’m ill-disposed to wag my finger at them, and think the only ethical course is to address the corrupt environment in which this act occurred, because that environment undermines any one-dimensional ethical evaluation of this murder in the street, and that makes me deeply uncomfortable.