The Morning Rant

SELF DEFENSE

I'm watching the Rittenhouse trial and the prosecution made the point that deadly force is allowed when you're defending your life, but not when you're protecting your property. You can't shoot somebody if all he's doing is stealing your stuff. When I heard that, I thought, oh boy, I'm screwed.

This was not a problem years ago, but now, with the social contract starting to tear apart, it's now and issue. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm hoping you morons with legal training will weigh in here. But after the 2020 summer of chaos and rioting, the situation I have in mind is this:

BLM decides to hold a protest/demonstration/march in my town, not downtown, but through residential streets, like mine. And the BLM leadership decides that they're just going to break into houses along the way and take whatever stuff they can walk off with. Because reparations. So, what do I do? I can lock my door, but they can bring police-style battering rams. I can stand there with a shotgun and try to look menacing, but what if they don't take me seriously? They can just push me aside and gain entry. Now, as I understand the law, I may be justified in shooting the first guy who pushed me, but if a whole stream of looters gain entry behind him and are not threatening me in any way (other than being in my house), they can just help themselves and there's nothing I can do about it. Yes, I can call the police, but ha ha ha, they'll come an hour or two later and take a report.

So, is there anything I can do, short of turning my house into a fortress? It's frustrating because, paradoxically, the looters are using the cover of law to do what they do. Because no matter what they do, the penalty for a private citizen to stop them in the act is greater than whatever they will be changed with for looting, assuming they're even caught. Look at this:

Why the tf am i still paying for groceries?

Oxford, Connecticut ????

pic.twitter.com/vynvwmL1kv

— Art TakingBack ???? (@ArtValley818_) November 11, 2021

Isn't this just looting? I'm old enough to remember when the police used to shoot looters. And reducing such crimes to 'just property damage', as leftists love to do to justify thedir looting, is morally retrograde:

The open assault on property taking place in cities across the country is clearly a campaign of violence. After all, a standard dictionary definition of violence is “behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.” That’s right, not just “someone,” but “something” too. That’s not just some technicality: it’s what people generally mean when they use the word “violence.” The term has long encompassed things like burning someone’s house down. Leftist commentators are basically trying to redefine “violence” as a synonym of “assault.”

Why the word games? It could very well be for political ends. After all, much of the hard left is heavily influenced by Marxism. And one of the tenets of Marxism is the rejection of private property rights in favor of communal (in practice, state-) ownership of the means of production. By excluding the seizure and destruction of private property from the meaning of “violence,” they are able to smuggle a key Marxist presumption into our very language.

This is an ominous path. The track record of Marxism is a litany of tyranny, famine, and murder, precisely because of its hostility toward private property.

Property rights are human rights, and we discard them at our own peril.

You know, what I could do is, like the left, change the definition of words to my advantage. In this case, I could redefine the 'self' part of 'self defense' to include my house, my car, and the rest of my property.

An earlier draft version of the Declaration of Independence contained the phrase, borrowed from John Locke, "life, liberty and property" which was eventually changed to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". That's how important the Founders considered property. It's also one of the Ten Commandments. "Thou shalt not steal" assumes the sanctity of property. This has been corrupted by the Marxists to "Thou shalt not steal, but we shalt". Only they call it liberation.

PropERty DAmAge IS Not vIoLEnCe

Well, This is Disturbing:

Who Dis:

For the 'Ettes:

Wednesday Who Dis: Jennifer Wayne, granddaughter of the Duke himself, John Wayne is a country-western singer with her own band, Runaway June.

Today's Edition Of The Morning Rant Is Brought To You By Blueberry Muffins:

(Click for bigger muffin)

(h/t SugarAndSpiceByLisa)

Bonus Happy Homecoming:

Thank you twitters. I needed this: pic.twitter.com/A0B9V3rJW6

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) October 15, 2021

posted by OregonMuse at 11:17 AM

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