Both the Right to Private Property and The Rule of Law is being attacked in what seems to be hundreds of cities across America. Lawless mobs made up of Black Lives Matter and Antifa (and other assorted ne’er-do-wells and other riff-raff wanting a “Grand Adventure”) laying siege to these targets.
Related: Urbes Delenda Est: The End of the Cities
Our society and our prosperous economy are built on the bedrock of private property and the rule of law which defends that property. That may not be pretty or fulfill a college sophomore’s utopia, but the hard lesson of a thousand years is that only private property provides the incentive for people to maintain that property — farms, houses, factories, stores — and to put in the immense effort to provide commodities of value to their fellow humans.
-John Cochrane (On looting)
Destroying other people’s property does not solve “systematic racism” or “police brutality.” That is a use of force intimidation tactic against those that have spent years of their lives building up. No amount of “well, insurance will pay for the losses” can cover it as they talk of actions in only monetary terms without saying the quiet parts out loud; the psychological and spiritual mayhem they are directing at their victims.
It does, however, strike at the heart of our nation; destroy that and what is left but a Third World nation ruled by Strong Men, tribalism, and the certain loss of that prosperity. After all, if your “stuff” can either be destroyed or taken from you in a blink of an eye, while struggle mightily for it in the first place? Then we WILL have a nation of victims.
And know that riots do have victims.
And we see feckless politicians, all of them Democrats, showing that they do not value the enormity of The Rule of Law – and the ramifications of its loss – as they either continue to sweep the cancer of these rioters or actively join in with them and allow their residents to suffer harm. Too, the far left (and often, sponsored by George Soros money in his attempt to sow chaos and remake America into his idea of a Dystopia) district attorneys openly refuse the follow and honor the laws they swore to uphold.
Or, in some cases, a campaign to NOT follow and honor those laws – in those cases, I really hope that the Law of Unintended Consequences is doing a HARD beat down on those that voted for them.
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
