[vladTheInhaler]

That's not true at all. Context is the only way to make any useful judgements. A couple examples:

Person A tackles person B to the ground and holds them there against their will. Is that morally acceptable? There's no way to tell.

If A is B's estranged ex-husband and is upset that she hasn't returned his calls, most people would say it's unacceptable behavior. If A is a bystander to a knife attack by B on London bridge, most people would (and did) say that it is justified.

[TeMPOraL]

In your first case: it is later revealed that the reason for A's action was B making threats of violence towards their kid and about to realize them.

The problem with third parties passing judgement is that they often lack full context.

[vladTheInhaler]

I completely agree. Outside of these toy examples, there really is no way to know the complete truth. But I don't think we should give up on doing the best we can to recover as much context as possible, and we certainly shouldn't fall into some sort of epistemic learned helplessness and try to make all judgements from a position of zero knowledge.

[Sebb767]

The problem is that anything you allow against the perceived enemy might come back to bite you if you suddenly are perceived to be the enemy. This is especially true when silencing opinions; you're not only taking away their right to speak, you're also taking your right to change your mind.

I fully agree with you that when judging a specific occurrence, the context is really important. Judging completely without context, on the other hand, is good way to know whether the action is something morally acceptable.

In this case, the 'goodness' of the action clearly depends on whether you like the target. So I'd argue that this really is not a good thing in general. It's slightly worse if it hits the 'good guys' and slightly better if it hits the 'bad guys', but it's not good either way.

[lsiebert]

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as the saying goes.

Any system is going to be imperfect. The question is, is it better than things currently are?

[mc32]

Yes we can look at particulars when applying the law to a particular case.

When we make out laws they should be impartial and not put the thumb on the scale when writing them.

[vladTheInhaler]

I'm not sure what you think a law would look like that is completely impartial. The very existence of a law represents a thumb on the scales of otherwise unconstrained human behavior. What specifically should we make laws impartial to?

[mc32]

We don’t have to consider ridiculous extremes. We need to consider our philosophy, mores and ethics to inform laws.

We don’t say, it’s illegal to commit theft, well, unless you’re the government or the judge, then it’s okay because we know you must have good intentions.

[vladTheInhaler]

Okay, so we should not give exemptions to specific categories of people who are a priori assumed to be good. I think that's fair. Are you concerned that that's the situation in the original context? Or would be, if we somehow knew who the original commenter was talking about?

[mc32]

It would be healthier to not know the identity to avoid introducing unnecessary bias in the decision.

It shouldn’t be like: oh it was Joe the grocer, yeah he’s okay, let ‘im go. Vs, oh it was Ernie the latrine digger, he always makes my skin crawl; throw the book at him!

[vladTheInhaler]

So if the hate brigades were being launched by a group with a long track record of bad-faith and abusive behavior, you don't think that should inform your decision making?