One of the side effects of the 2020 Covid Pandemic was to trigger a movement to untether crime from consequences in some Leftist-governed cities. Brad Polumbo writes about one such city, Seattle. In a FEE article Why Seattle’s Proposed ‘Poverty Excuse’ for Crimes Would Destroy the City’s Economy, Polumbo writes that “This policy would basically give anyone with a good sob story a green light to violate property rights at will.” Indeed. Polumbo sights just one victim of the proposed “poverty excuse” policy:
Matthew Humphrey recently lost $4,000 worth of goods in a theft of his Seattle barbershop. Under a new proposal the Seattle City Council is considering this month, what happened to him wouldn’t even be a crime—if the thieves claimed they were driven by poverty, that is.
“I think it’s insane,” the victimized barber told a local news outlet. “It’s one of these well-intended concepts (of) we want to take care of people that can't take care of themselves. But what you are really doing is hurting other people."
“Hurting other people” is the intention. This new “poverty excuse” policy lays bare the real motive behind the entire crusade against economic inequality—hatred of achievement and the individual virtues that lead to achievement. A policy like this is driven by that hatred. Destruction of people of virtue and achievement is the “intended concept.” They are the “other people” the barber speaks of. And it’s not “well-intended,” unless well-intended means nihilism.
First and foremost, this policy would obviously incentivize more crime and more theft.
First and foremost, it’s pointless to explain the consequences to the architects and supporters of this policy. They can’t fail to know where this must necessarily lead. Poverty is the natural state of man. Production and trade is the only way out. You can’t help “the poor” by destroying the non-poor—the producers and traders. If poverty justifies crime, it’s the end of production and trade, and man is reduced to a herd of predatory jungle animals. And that’s the whole point of a policy such as this. Karl Marx would approve. Civilized people will recognize this policy for the naked face of evil that it is, and fight this nihilism tooth and nail. And fighting back begins with not granting any benefit of the doubt to the perpetrators. The architects of the policy are not well-intentioned. They are not naive. They know full well what they are doing, and why. Mistakes of this magnitude are never made innocently.
The officially dubbed “poverty defense law,” which excuses the thieves and many other misdemeanor crimes from legal consequences if they claim poverty as their motive, never passed, to my knowledge. But just the fact that it was proposed and seriously debated in the city council of a major American city is an indication that we may be closer to chaos than we may have thought, at least in some cities.
Related Reading:
Hatred of Happiness, not Justice, Motivates the anti-Economic Inequality Crusader
QUORA *: ‘What makes someone a socialist?'
The Enemies of Charters Versus the Parents and Their Kids
No comments:
Post a Comment