1. I'm walking down the street. A man grabs me from behind, drags me into an alley. He's going to rape or kill me. Some pedestrian hears he commotion, grabs a piece of wood or some other heavey object, and cracks my attacker on the back of the head. He kills him. Should cops arrest the pedestrian who might have saved my life? After all, he killed a man. He must be a bad guy.

2. You work in the accounting department of a large corporation. You are a nobody, but one day you discover something terrible. The CEO has embezzled more than half a million dollars from company coffers in less than two years. You blow the whistle. You get fired for meddling above your rank. After all, you brought shame and bad press on to the corporation. You must be a bad guy.

3. An evil dictator is oppressing an entire nation of people, and has been for decades. There are mass graves dotting the country; people who dissented against his brand of governance. The leader of the free world, who has some interest in the dictator's country, decides to free the people. He takes out the dictator, and puts a new government in place. During the process, innocent people are killed and injured, mostly by supporters of the dictator. Do we arrest the leader of the free world, because he inadvertantly caused the deaths of all those innocents?

4. A politician steals your tax money. At least, we think he has. He's running the government, and is refusing to give up power, even though it looks like he's been caught. Another politician (we'll call him Stephen for the sake of giving him a name) refuses to work with the corrupt leader. By refusing to work with him, Parliament effectively shuts down. Do we blame the leader for being corrupt, or "Stephen" for calling him on it and refusing to do business with him?

Cross posted to The Shotgun