Ward Clark, writing at Red State, reminds us that “The primary purpose of government is to protect the liberty and property of the citizens.” If you asked 100 randos on any American street corner how many would even come close to that? Depends on the street corner, I suppose, but the closer you get to one of those progressive plantations doing business as America’s cities, the further left and the further from the truth you’d likely get.
Government exists, our government at least, to protect natural rights, one of which is property. It’s hard to square with the fact that the thing your government appears to value most is finding ways to separate you from it. But then, not so much, when you see how few people turn out to protect that right from that government.
A local example might be your town, county, or city election. My town has at least 18,000 registered voters in it, but getting more than 20% of them to show up and vote in a local election to protect their property (and keep taxes low) is an impossible dream. If four thousand turn out, it’s a big deal, but given all the talk about property taxes and how high they are, we barely saw more than that.
There was a lot of spending on the ballot, especially school spending, which is the biggest burden and the single worst return on investment. Everything passed. Our taxes are going up again, a lot, because the party of the left, which insists we need to find ways to lower local property taxes, is entirely responsible for everything passing. If they had voted no, according to their rhetoric, it would all have failed.
They could not, of course, vote no, because they haven’t spent enough of other people’s money. They want the local burden as high as possible. It’s the only way they can push the lie that the solution to their endless appetite for spending is statewide taxes.
The fatal flaw, the lie that reveals the grift, is that you can’t reduce the tax burden and increase spending, and Democrats always increase spending. New Jersey, Connecticut, and others sold the same lie about property taxes and their governments are bloated, wasteful, full of fraud, unaffordable, and getting worse every year.
New York, California, and now Washington State have added or threatened wealth taxes, driving investors and job creators out, leaving the middle and underclass holding a bill that keeps getting bigger because with Dems in control, it doesn’t know how to do anything else.
As if this disrespect for property were not enough, many of the large cities in these states refuse to enforce laws they established to ensure property is protected.
In an interview with ABC7, owner Jeremy Salib said about two-dozen high schoolers took armloads of merchandise including candy, chips and beer during the “premeditated, organized” theft.
“Of course, they’re gathering — so many of them — that I can’t stop just one kid, right? It’s 24, 25 kids, so it leaves me kind of helpless — especially with LAPD saying they can’t do anything about it,” Salib said.
Another sorry tale of left-wing rule. From organized crime rings that use the indifference to other people’s property to profit at their expense to coordinating acts by hooligans just taking stuff because they can get away with it.
And voters appear indifferent, especially the ones who benefit from laws that rob some people to pay others. An indifference that is dangerous to everyone, especially the people who lack the mobility to run away from it. The rich leave, but the spending stays, and before too long, you get less for the vote you sold and more indifference to your rights.
If you can’t see where the leads are, then you probably deserve what you get, just like the people who didn’t show up to vote against all that spending that exists to convince you the same people who bankrupted you at the town level won’t do the same thing at the state level.
The same people who tell the police to ignore other sorts of property crime. The ones who appoint judges who let career criminals loose to assault, rape, and murder the people, and then look the other way because if they paid attention, they’d have to take credit for a downward spiral that manages to benefit them and no one else.
