Batman's version of "Broken Windows"

Fire of Liberty
During my lengthy day on the INTERNET, I came across a piece by Douglas Kern over at Tech Central Station which focuses on the deep philosophical messages in the movie Batman Begins. As Kern notes, the Capped Crusader is not in Gotham to face petty crimes that are constantly being committed by the everyday criminal but is set on ending the big-time criminals who are causing the internal rot of society by effectively destroying the whole Rule of Law framework and trying to impose their own demented sense of justice and thug law. So you could say that Batman is imposing his own "Broken Windows" policy on Gotham on a higher plane. He realizes that if you don't step up and target the criminal masterminds who are running rampant throughout Gotham spreading their ideas of "thug justice" then you eventually won't have a society to lose. I'd say that you could say that Batman has taken head of Edmund Burkes adage "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Though we could close this with my unique view of Batman's philosophical viewpoint but I thought you'd like to see it from Kern's viewpoint:

Just as rogue ninja cults make local justice impossible, so, too, do rogue nations make moral communities impossible. Totalitarian dictatorships are famous for offering "citizens" the choice between a moral death and a compromised life lived in the thrall of evil men and evil deeds. Every government will act wrongly at some point, but a rogue nation exterminates those forces that halt and correct the ordinary evils of the world. Such evil is not amenable to the ordinary exercises of influence. To a nation that exterminates its own people, words like "sovereignty" and "rule of law" are punch lines, not deterrents. Expecting the United Nations or the Popular Opinion of Rich Western Countries to stop rogue nations is like expecting the Gotham City Police to catch the Joker: it won't happen, but we'll get lots of dead bodies and grisly laughs along the way.

But if we accept that rogue nations require rogue crime-fighting nations to oppose them, we should remember the words of Master Yo- … er, Bob Dylan: to live outside the law, you must be honest. When we take down rogue nations, we are compelled to offer democracy in the place of tyranny. Even apart from the myriad benefits that democracy can bring to the oppressed, we must promote democracy for our own sake. Only by doing so can we ensure that our actions do not descend into arrogant vigilantism - or, worse, naked self-interest. By confining the scope of our actions to defending the right to make moral choices, we ensure that we remain Batmen, and not ninjas in the League of Shadows.

Many critics deride our efforts to spread democracy not because they will fail, but because they will succeed - perhaps bringing to power anti-democratic, totalitarian threats every bit as vicious as the one we depose. That's a risk we have to take. Sometimes you fight for justice for a murderer who really was guilty. Sometimes you fight for procedural justice and the jury hands down a stupid verdict anyway. And yes, sometimes you fight to give people freedom only to discover that the people choose not to choose, or that they choose barbarism to civilization. Freedom must entail the freedom to fail.

Beware any pundit of any political bent who tells you that the success or failure of freedom in any country is inevitable; with free will, nothing is preordained. When we fight, we fight for freedom and democracy not because they will always succeed (they won't) or because they will always serve our interests (they definitely won't) but because we will become the monsters if we fight for anything more - or less.

Let's just say that this Batman doesn't have time waxing philosophically, he's actually fighting the scourge that is spreading rot throughout the city and getting results. You could say he's the superhero version of Rudy Guiliani but with a cooler looking outfit, gadgets and a car.