According to the Washington Post, a looter in Ferguson, Missouri, expressed pride and admiration for looters and said their actions are justified.
“I’m proud of us. We deserve this, and this is what’s supposed to happen when there’s injustice in your community,” said DeAndre Smith, whom the Washington Post says was “fresh from looting the QuikTrip.”
You might dismiss these comments as absurd or marginal. But why? The premise of these comments is, “I’m entitled to what I need.” Politicians, university professors and preachers tell us every day that we are all our brother’s keepers, that our primary purpose for living is service to others, and to enjoy an afterlife in bliss, one must selflessly love others as God (according to faith) selflessly loves us.
These assumptions and ideas represent both the faith-based/traditional and New Age/post-modern “progressivism” of our times. If you hold these assumptions and claim to live by them, then by what right do you criticize, or dismiss as absurd, the comments of this looter?
You have to think out the implications of the platitudes you claim to uphold. For example, in defending our multi-trillion dollar social and corporate welfare state, I often hear people say things like, “We have to help out the poor,” or, “There has to be a safety net.”
Now, what are you really saying? Are you saying: “It’s nice to help out the poor,” or are you claiming that government must utilize force to make people help “the poor”? (If you look at our national debt and the federal deficit, it seems like we’re doing a lot more than sending aid to “the poor.”)
The real issue here is more significant than liberty and freedom versus compulsion (as crucial as that issue is). The real issue is: Do you live by the conclusions of your own mind? Or are others to make decisions for you?
It started with the issue of charity and a “safety net.” Then it moved on to all sorts of other things, such as the kind of mortgages we purchase, the sort of health care we receive, flood insurance, food stamps, unemployment benefits, corporate subsidies, aid to foreign lands, car specifications, bathroom water pressure requirements that OSHA, the EPA and countless other federal authorities tell us we may or may not have.
At the end of the day, our lives either belong to ourselves — or they do not. If they do (and I believe most Americans will still say they do), then you’ve got to consider the contradiction between self-determination versus the looter quoted in Ferguson MO.
He’s saying (to the owner of the store he looted), “I’m entitled to this.” Put another way: “You didn’t build this. It’s not really yours. You’re no more entitled to it than I am.”
You might reply, “Well, he’s entitled to it if it comes from a government authority; but he’s not entitled to take it from someone’s store.” But in principle, what’s the difference? There’s certainly a stylistic difference. There’s less material damage when the money is taken from a government authority, but it’s still force.
The looter is making a statement here about morality. He’s saying, “It’s mine.” Why? Because he says he needs it. How’s that any different from pressure group A or pressure group B marching (or lobbying) in Washington D.C. and getting its share of the collectively owned yet privately created national “pie”?
One officer told the Post that widespread looting has spawned “looting tourism” wherein thieves as far away as Illinois and Texas are traveling to Ferguson to steal.
“It’s like looting tourism,” said the officer. “It’s like they are spending their gas money to come down here and steal.”
Looting “tourism” is an interesting concept. Tourism implies fun and festivity. Yet the idea that we are all our brother’s keepers was supposed to make reference to helping people out in desperation and need. If these people are in such desperate need of what they’re taking from these stores, then why do they reportedly go about it in a mindset of frolic, fun and amusement? Where do they get the gas money to do so, if they’re so miserably poor? Doesn’t this tell you something has gone desperately wrong somewhere?
The truth is: Capitalism (even hampered capitalism) has eliminated starvation and true poverty from lands fortunate enough to have that system. After centuries of starvation, capitalism (to those who had it) not only eliminated starvation, but allowed many of us to become obese. Obesity is a problem, but it sure beats starvation.
What capitalism did not eradicate — and cannot eliminate — is economic inequality. Under capitalism, everyone gets richer and more comfortable (including the beneficiaries of voluntary charity who count on wealth creation as much as anyone else). But even with a progressive rise in the standard of living, differences in conditions remain. Some will always be richer than others. This is the thing that some cannot stand, including the mentality of the person who claims, while looting, “I deserve this.” The point is: He has volumes and sermons of agreement from people who would never be found looting: From philosophy professors, The New York Times, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, economics professors, politicians, priests, ministers and rabbis.
The presence of outside forces could be seen during Monday evening’s clashes. CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill said two white individuals, one an “anarchist” and another from a “revolutionary Communist group in Illinois,” lobbed water bottles into a crowd of protestors and were shunned by protestors who told them to “go back to your neighborhood with that instead of coming in here and messing with us.”
The Post says a 27-year-old “militant” from Chicago explained that the time for peace has passed.
“This is not the time for no peace. We are jobless men, and this is our job now–getting justice,” the Chicago militant told the Post. “If that means violence, that’s okay by me. They’ve been doing this to us for years.” [Source: washingtonpost.com 8/18/14, and also breitbart.com 8/19/14]
Imagine if such a person put his mind and body into attempting to make a productive living for himself. Imagine if instead of forcibly taking from others — whether through the obvious destruction of looting or the pseudo-civilized act of extracting taxes from productive citizens via corrupt politicians — he devoted himself to a life of producing for himself.
The morality most of us claim to subscribe to — brother’s keeperism — actually upholds what the looter is saying. The looter, like the altruistic welfare statists who run our government, tell us: You didn’t build that. And this person deserves it. The looter takes them at their word, and merely skips the middleman. The government officials — from Obama on down — can have no issue with the looter’s approach to morality. They just want him to go through the government to collect his loot.
Of the two — the looter, or the politician-intellectual-preacher — which one is the more honest?
Sociologists have historically looked at looters as helpless, frightened and frustrated people simply doing what they can to survive in an “unjust” capitalist society. In reality, as this looter demonstrates, they generally know exactly what they’re doing, and why.
The same goes for the looters in our government, academia and media.
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