There are numerous questionable ways to defend looting; "The media won't pay attention unless there is violence or looting" "Looting rejects the legitimacy of ownership rights and property" "Boston Tea Party" etc. Author Vicky Osterweil mines them all in her new book, In Defense of Looting.
But no major change is possible in America without the support of the people who reject violence and looting. Greater violence during protests only leads to repression and marginalization. Non-violent protests will attract media coverage and foster change in America, but only if they are very large, consistent and sustained.
Vicky Osterweil revealed her Marxist frame of reference in an August 27, 2020 interview published by NPR:
"It also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed. It attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that's unjust. And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free."
It's unjust that people have to work for things? We can have things for free! Really? How does that work? Just take what you want? What happens when you run out of free stuff? How do the companies who produce what you take for free continue production with no income? It's a completely ridiculous argument that takes one down the rabbit-hole of Marxist ideology.
Every civilized society has certain taboos. You don't abandon your children, you don't pimp them out to sexual predators, you don't molest them. You don't commit rape. Vickie Osterweil is so obviously misguided that it a wonder that she found a publisher for her sick book. (or should I say "his" sick book, as reviews have referred to both genders, and I understand that he/she is a transsexual) Above all else, this is a book about rationalizing evil, anti-social behavior amidst a barrage of left-wing cliches, such as oppression, racism, and the rest of their catologue of lament. The First Amendment allows any crackpot---and Osterweil is undeniably that---to self-publish a book and allow the marketplace of ideas to endorse or condemn it. But when an institution such as National Public Radio offers free exposure to this inane book in the form of an author interview in which interviewer Natalie Escobar fails to administer the take-down that Osterweil and his/her book deserve, it affords it the legitimacy that it doesn't deserve. The United States has entered a period of steep decline, starting around the middle 1990s (and arguably, even earlier, with the advent of the welfare state). The massive deception practiced by George W. Bush, the housing meltdown, the emergence of race-baiting as a force to be catered to, the polarization within our political system are all causes for deep concern. If self-respect, respect for the rights of others, and simple common sense are to ever regain their dominance, garbage such as "In Defense of Looting" must have no place. It should not be legitimized by mainstream author interviews and other forms of recognition. It should be consigned to oblivion, the only place where it belongs.
ReplyDeleteWell said!
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