Is Stealing Wrong? Not on the Left

To most readers of this column, the question is absurd. The reason is not because the question is, in fact, absurd; it is because most readers of this column are conservative, and many are religious.

As incredible as this assertion is to just about all religious people and virtually all conservatives, most leftists do not believe stealing is wrong. Since I always draw a distinction between those on the Left and liberals, let me add that I suspect most liberals think stealing is wrong. But it almost doesn't matter because they vote for people who do not think it is.

One proof is the passage of Proposition 47, a California ballot initiative passed in 2014, under which theft of less than $950 in goods is treated as a nonviolent misdemeanor and rarely prosecuted. As a result, in Democrat-run California cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, retail theft has soared.

Walgreens stores in San Francisco are racking up four times the average amount of theft in Walgreens stores across the country; spending on security guards in San Francisco is 35 times more than the chain's average in other cities. Walgreens has been forced to close 22 stores in the city since 2016.

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle: "The Safeway located in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood ... was a longstanding, 24-hour fixture in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood. But as of last week, the store's hours have been cut back to 6 a.m. to 9 p.m ... A Safeway spokesperson (said) that the cutbacks are 'due to an increasing amount of theft at the store.'"

Further proof that the Left doesn't consider theft wrong -- at least when committed by a person of color -- was an interview broadcast on NPR last year with the author of a book titled "In Defense of Looting." The NPR interviewer threw only softball questions to the author.

In the last election, Los Angeles voters elected San Francisco's previous district attorney, George Gascon, as Los Angeles's district attorney. It was Los Angeles's way of declaring that stealing is not wrong. And it is worth noting that it is not only racial minorities and the poor who make these elections possible; it is also prosperous whites. The Los Angeles DA is a wealthy white, and he was supported by a white billionaire, George Soros.

It is hard to believe that millions of Americans do not deem stealing from stores morally wrong, so let's try to explain how this has come about.

Reason No. 1 is moral relativism. For as long as there has been a Left, it has rejected moral absolutes. As the great British historian, Paul Johnson, pointed out a half-century ago in his magnum opus, "Modern Times," the secular world applied the relativism of the natural sciences to morality.

Reason No. 2 is the reason for reason number one: the collapse of the Judeo-Christian value system and the accompanying abandonment of, and often disdain for, biblical ethics. Biblical morality posits moral absolutes -- meaning that stealing is wrong for everyone, certainly people of every color. Yes, one can offer a biblical defense of a starving man stealing food for his starving family. But that is hardly what is happening in San Francisco and other American cities.

Reason No. 3 is Marxist morality. From Marx to the present, Marxism has divided the world not between right and wrong, but between economic classes. Therefore, it is morally acceptable for members of the poorer classes to steal from members of the more affluent classes. This notion has made its way into young people's minds for decades. About 30 years ago, I spoke to students from four Cleveland high schools. I asked them to raise their hand if they would steal something they really wanted from a department store if they were certain they would not get caught. Nearly all the students raised their hands. When I asked some of them to justify their reasoning, they all said the same thing: they wouldn't steal from a mom-and-pop store, but they would steal from a department store. It is OK to steal from "the rich."

Reason No. 4 is leftists' view of nonwhites, especially blacks, a view that conservatives have never shared. Leftists truly believe that blacks are intellectually and morally inferior to whites. The evidence? They do not believe blacks should be held to the same intellectual and moral standards to which leftists hold whites. Leftists do not defend whites who steal, and they hold whites to higher intellectual standards. Leftists do not argue for lowering math standards for whites, only for blacks.

I am going to write this first, and then go read the article linked. I know it is backwards, but...I want to publicly see how far off I am. I don’t think I am far off.

Freeper mountainlion made the statement that this is the SOP of the Left. Indeed. It is why I have come to regard the Left overall as evil, and those who ally with them and facilitate their goals by voting for them as Useful Idiots at best.

That Dennis Prager would even have to posit the question “Is Stealing Wrong?” even rhetorically, is a stunning event.

I took a philosophy course once when in college titled “Lying”. In it, we discussed the concept, how lying was categorized and defined, and if it were ever justified.

Most reasonable people agreed that there are times when lying is permissible. You may even lie to a loved one to protect them in some fashion.

When I saw this, I applied the same set of tools to Stealing.

The answer was readily apparent: There are indeed times when stealing is permissible, even applauded. But in nearly every case that came to my mind, the person being stolen from was categorized as an enemy.

An enemy. Think of that.

If we were fighting the Chinese in open war, stealing from them would be perfectly patriotic. In that lies the rub. We are not in open war with them yet. So we, as a generally (at least, formerly were) moral people, shrink from stealing from them. Too many do not see them as enemies, and as such, are almost always treated from the American side with the moral benevolence that is given to legal partners or friends in any endeavor.

The Communists suffer under no delusion, at least at the governmental level. The Chicoms readily recognize that they are at war with us, and it is national policy to steal from us, at any and every level possible, and they do. This is further compounded by a cultural trait common to the Communists and the Chinese citizenry, that property rights are malleable and open to exploitation.

General Robert Spalding (Ret.) who is a foremost expert on Communist China, learned the language and lived in Communist China as an active duty Major in the USAF took an official, government sponsored (all expenses paid) sabbatical and got his Masters Degree in Business at a university in China back around 2005, understands the Communist Chinese as well as any foreigner can.

He is the author of one of the most important books in the last 20 years “Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept” and is also nearly single-handedly responsible for the awakening of the West to the peril of allowing the Communist Chinese the opportunity and means to build and control 5G networks in Western countries. He was relieved of his job on the National Security Council as the Cyberwarfare Advisor to the JCS and White House for vocally making his feelings known about the danger of giving the Communists free reign to build and control our 5G infrastructure.

In his book, he talks about the cultural aspect of stealing in Communist China, and how the manifestation of capitalism in Communist China may be the most unfettered and unregulated form of capitalism in existence right now, which highlights an important cultural difference with respect to stealing.

The form of Capitalism as allowed in Communist China is so wild and unfettered that, as long as you don’t interfere with the activities of the income of the Chinese Communist Party, you can do nearly anything you like, steal, copy, appropriate, bend rules, break rules, nearly anything short of murder to your business competitors outside government. They don’t care about the morality of it. They will stab (in their business throat, figuratively speaking) a fellow Chinese citizen who is a competitor running their own business selling grilled meat as long as it doesn’t step on the toes of the CCP or run afoul of them. They just turn a blind eye.

But that says a lot, and why, in the end, I think we are going to win this undeclared war. To the Chinese, culturally, stealing is fair game, from foreigners definitely, but even from their own fellow Chinese.

As Americans, we have property rights (or used to). Many thinking Americans understand fully that economic freedom is inextricably linked to political/personal freedom. You cannot have one without the other, the mutated forms practiced formally by the Communists against their non-Chinese foes and allowed against their own citizenry notwithstanding. If you do not have personal/political freedom, you cannot have economic freedom, and vice versa.

Property rights have long been codified in our culture as Americans, and here is where we enter shoal waters as Americans.

Stealing has become totally permissible and even promoted and lauded by the Left. Everything from the open redistribution of wealth in our welfare and “support” programs and legislation right down to laws that allow shoplifting (stealing) up to a certain amount of money and beyond without prosecution. These programs and laws (like the shoplifting laws) are put into place by ostensibly elected legislatures and this is the great danger our country faces.

We, as Conservatives, have a strength and a weakness that is readily appreciated by the Left, and used to GREAT advantage by them, particularly in the 2020 election: As Conservatives, we believe in the rule of law (The US Constitution being a document we hold dearly to) and we abide by those laws. The Left has long known that, if an illegality may be cloaked with a veneer of legality (such as laws outlining adherence to the strict timelines for officially appointing electors after the Presidential election) they can commit nearly any illegality and codify it by getting Conservatives to abide by law, deflecting any scrutiny of the REAL illegality of a fraudulent election. That is just an example.

They do the same thing with gun laws, employment laws, and as we have recently seen, education...basically, any area they can commit illegality and cover it with thin coating of official law. We are waking up to it, but it may be too late.

In summary, I go back to one of my original statements: Stealing is generally not permissible in a Constitutional Republic where property rights are codified in law. But everyone agrees, if someone is an enemy, it is permissible (even laudable) to steal from your enemies.

And the Left regards us as enemies.

Now. I am off to read the article by Dennis Prager...:)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.