December 21, 2023

Retribution and revenge are different [in multiple ways]

—Harvard Summary of Oxford trained Princeton Philosopher Robert Nozick’s views on retribution

The latest misinformation that the Democrat “news”-media colluders (hereafter the DNC) to smear Donald Trump before the 2024 election is that Trump called for “revenge” for his political opponents if wins re-election in 2024. 

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Brett Samuels in The Hill says that “Trump signals he’s out for revenge in his second term.”  The Daily Mail and the left-wing The Guardian, both in the U.K., makes the same accusation.  Politico states that in a second term, Trump will be seeking revenge. Felon Michael Cohen, now a regular useful expert guest on CNN, stated to Jake Tapper that he could be the target of Trump’s revenge, to which Jake replied, “That has occurred to me too” (thereby admitting that his view of Trump is tainted by self-interest). The Washington Post, which used to be a newspaper, reports that Trump and his allies plot revenge” in his second term.  The Huffington Post announces that Trump “vows vengeance” against “vermin” in his second term.  CNN states ominously that in his second term Trump will use his justice department “for revenge.”  Kristen Welker, in what critical reasoning textbooks call a “complex” or “loaded” question fallacy, asks Rona McDaniel if Trump’s words “essentially make the Republican Party … ‘stand for revenge?”  One could cite many other examples but this should be sufficient.

Trump did not threaten revenge.  Rather than rely on deceptive summaries by DNC partisans consider Trump’s precise words.  In fact, a competent seventh grader, if the DNC can still find one, can easily verify that what Trump actually said at the Conservative Political Conference on March 4, 2023 was this:

I am your warrior.  I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.

As the DNC has done again and again and again and again and again over the past few years it has again put words in Trump’s mouth in order to smear him.  Trump used the word “retribution”, not the word “revenge” and the two are quite different, even opposed, concepts.  As Oxford trained Princeton philosopher Robert Nozick puts it, 1.) retribution is done to set a wrong right, whereas revenge is done for a “mere harm or injury or slight”, 2.) retribution sets a limit on the punishment inflicted whereas revenge sets no limit, 3.) revenge requires a personal tie to the victim, retribution, being a concept of legal justice, does not, 4.) revenge involves pleasure in the suffering of the victim whereas retribution does not or takes pleasure only in justice being done, 5.) retribution commits one to enacting similar punishments in similar cases whereas revenge does not. That is, retribution refers to a punishment inflicted in accordance with legal limits in pursuit of justice and, therefore, is not done for personal revenge (hatred).

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One need not go to Oxford or Princeton to find these points. The Brittanica Dictionary defines retribution as infliction of punishment for doing something wrong.  By contrast, Brittanica defines “revenge” as “the act of doing something to hurt someone because that person did something that hurt you.”  That is, retribution is only to be dolled out to someone who deserves it because they did something “wrong” whereas revenge can be dolled out to someone for personal animosity.  Similarly, dictionary.com defines “retribution” as “requital according to merits or deserts, especially for evil,” whereas it defines “revenge” as exacting punishment “especially in a resentful or vindictive spirit”.  Is one still allowed to seek retribution for evil now or has evil been put in charge?

In fact, Trump’s own words make his meaning clear.   Trump stated explicitly, and I quote, that by retribution he meant “justice” for people who have been “wronged and betrayed”.  There is nothing in Trump’s words about revenge or joy in inflicting pain on his political opponents.  In order to project those ideas into Trump’s words they have to substitute the word “revenge” for Trump’s own word “retribution.”  The Left is, once again, in the psychological sense, projecting their own revengeful feelings on Trump.

The distinction between retribution and revenge is a standard point in the philosophy and sociology of law.

The basic idea of retribution is that the state [not the angry individual] “returns” to the offender a negative experience proportional to his offense. … “Revenge” is “an act or instance of retaliating in order to get even” and “[make] the “enemy” suffer. It is the individual person [not the state] who seeks revenge.

Has the DNC ever heard of retributive justice?  Instead of a proper analysis and application of these concepts the only thing one gets from the DNC is a recycling of slogans, which, evidently, they confuse with “thinking.”

In another example of the fact that the DNC regularly resorts to word-games rather than factual points, recall that, in order to bolster their fake Trump-is-a-racist storyline they claimed that during his presidency, Trump told four members of “the squad” to “go back where they came from.”  What?  Trump told the members of the Squad to get out of the country as if they were illegal aliens!  Thus, Politico, the “left-leaning” fact checking entity, gleefully explained how stupid Trump was to tell 3 members of the “Squad” who were born in America, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Talib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), to go back to the country of their origin.   Only Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was born in a foreign country.   Talib stated that Trump needs to be impeached for this and Ayanna Pressley said that “this is what racism looks like”. 

However, Trump did not tell the “Squad” to leave the country.  In order to see this consider the entirety of Trump’s statement,

Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.  Then come back and show us how it is done.