The Logic That Killed Trayvon Martin

And will kill many more until it's rejected.

In a column in the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates concludes:

What you must understand is that when the individual lives of those freighted by racism are deemed less than those who are not, all other inhumanities follow. That is the logic of Richard Cohen. It is the logic of Barack Obama's potential head of the DHS. This logic is not new, original or especially egregious. It is the logic of the country's largest city. It is the logic of the American state. It is the logic scribbled across the lion's share of our history. And it is the logic that killed Trayvon Martin.

Ed Kilgore:

All I’d add, which I often do, is that both in terms of the Zimmerman/Martin case and the gun issue generally, we ought to be asking Americans if they really want to be protected from crime by the police, or be forced to do it themselves or rely on the likes of George Zimmerman. If they think police resources are inadequate or their personnel are untrustworthy, let’s talk about fixing those problems, not throwing up our hands and engaging in an arms race with criminals we can never win.

Never forget: an important hallmark of a modern civilized society is a monopoly on the use of deadly force by public authorities under the supervision of laws, courts and elected officials. When we indulge in the barbarism of sanctioned private killing, we also inevitably encourage other forms of barbarism, like racism.

 Stand your ground isn't a law. It's the raw barbarism of a primitive society without laws or community values of any kind. It is Somalia.