Looting is Looting, Dammit!
While lefties get their panties in a bunch over news articles that accuse black looters of “looting” while noting that white non-looters merely “found” the items they found, some of my friends on the right are getting equally silly in the opposite direction, refusing to admit (out loud, at least) that there is any moral distinction to be drawn between people who “steal” food so they can eat and those who steal guns so they can shoot at FEMA officers, electronics so they can do God-knows-what, or anything else they steal simply because they can and not because they need to in order to survive. John Hawkins of Right Wing News is one of the worst offenders. Not being content simply to disagree, he instead resorts to pop psychology to explain away the inconvenient fact of other conservatives actually disagreeing with his self-evident viewpoint:
While I like and respect Peggy Noonan and other conservatives who’re making this argument (like Jonah Goldberg), this is completely bogus. It’s an example of conservatives taking a position they know is morally wrong just because they don’t want to be perceived as “mean.” It’s also — in almost every case — hypocritical.
For those keeping score, note that he made a similar argument when that idiot manager at a Loews theater kicked an autistic kid out of a matinee for laughing too loudly, an act for which Loews itself rightly (and promptly) apologized. I could try reverse-pop-psychology and argue that Hawkins is a liberal at heart who feels deep-seated guilt for his “heartless” conservative views, and feels the need to overcompensate by bashing any conservatives who actually do have a heart, but that would be stooping to his level so I won’t do that. Instead, I’ll simply point out a very basic distinction between stealing to survive and stealing for other reasons: one is legal, and the other isn’t. Happy?
UPDATE: A non-looting “looter” faces criminal charges for an act of heroism. Lovely.
UPDATE x2: Or maybe not.
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:11 am
No. You are hereby drummed and I mean DRUMMED out of the rolls of conservative commentators!!!!!!! Seriously: yes, you are right. The analysis is on the basis of self defense (the right to use force to preserve your life up to and including killing your fellow man). In this case instead of killing someone in self defense, they are stealing/looting/finding food to survive. It is always a problem to define the circumstance that give rise to this extension of the right to self defense and what is worse, you will find virtually no where an intellectual, historical and LEGAL basis for this extension. In some of the criminal law textbooks there are discussions of jury nulification in criminal cases that concern this proposition tangentially. As I remember (and we’re talking 40 years ago) a case from the Middle Ages involved a criminal penalty of hanging for stealing food. The defendant was a child and was found not guily by a jury of commoners. He really was guilty if you looked at the facts but was found not guilty because the jury knew his personal circumstances (in my view). He was not stealing for profit, but to survive. Here both circumstances (necessity) and purpose (not for gain but for survival) combined to satisfy the requirements of an extension of self defence in the minds of the members or the jury. Unfortunately that is my analysis, not the testbook’s analysis. However I would gladly defend anyone from charges arising from looting if the circumstances (necessity and survival) warranted it. I am sure I could win the case versus Patterico. I’m not so sure I could beat Mrs. Patterico though. She’s better looking and therefore I’d be at a distinct disadvantage with the jury, particularly if she brings her children with her into the court room.
September 2nd, 2005 at 1:08 am
“I could ……………… so I won’t do that.” (chuckle)
But you are right. Hawkins takes it too far, as he often does. I think most commenters have made the correct distinction between stealing food and water and looting non necessities. However I do think that the oft repeated remarks by on scene reporters who expressed that it was OK to loot for the right reasons added to the problem. Hungry and suffering victims will not wait for approval from anyone to take food and water, but looters may very well have felt emboldened as they learned that they had a ‘right’ to loot.
It sure got the leftist ‘speakers for the oppressed’ riled up at conservatives and liberals both, for condemning the kind of looting that we here agree is immoral.
I’ve never heard of looters sniping at medical personnel. In fact, I am suspicious that some other agency is taking advantage of the disaster and confusion to worsen it, to whatever ends.
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:12 am
In case of such a catastrophic crisis, it is absolutely moral and ethical to appropriate, as necessary to survival, food and water belonging to others, so long as such doesn’t deprive the owner of his/her own right to survival. Of course, an attempt at compensation should be made later.
I speak from a Christian point of view, in which we regard humans as the mere trustees of God’s property. In a massive disaster, morally speaking God simply transfers the property into the hands of a new trustee.
If someone is stranded in the mountains in the dead of winter, perhaps lost in a snow storm, I pray that they damn well break into my family’s cabin and avail themselves to whatever they need to live.
To do otherwise is to say that property has a higher value than human life, an idolatry that is morally repugnant and contrary to common sense.
I am not aware that TV, stereos and the like are necessary to survival, however.
September 2nd, 2005 at 10:04 am
No one is starving in New Orleans. It takes a long time to starve. Weeks. More likely months. Look it up. There is no moral or legal basis for excusing the looters. They’re criminals.
September 2nd, 2005 at 10:13 am
Tell that to the Louisiana State Police.
September 2nd, 2005 at 9:19 pm
Dave and Xrlq: it is precisely the question of necessity that determines whether the extension of the self defense argument applies. If there is no necessity concerning survival, then there is no right to self defense argument. Taking food or other things is generally illegal and immoral, but there are legal and moral defenses in some cercimstances-necessity for survival. Deciding when those circumstance arise is difficult at best. Consider if a 400 pound man can claim taking food is necessary for his survival. On the other hand a thin person might need the food for survival. Also what about a diabetic–they might require sugar or insulin for their survival. It is not an easy, simple calculation. Each case can be very different. But each decision must be decided on the basis of the same standard (necessity for survival) or we would have an arbitrary result. As to the Louisiana State Police,the less said the better. What a corrupt organization.
September 3rd, 2005 at 10:15 am
People can theoretically survive for a long time without food, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t need food for survival. Being without food makes you more susceptible to disease and physically weaker which makes you more susceptible to murder and less able to handle emergencies. It also may make it impossible for you to get food when it does become a matter of immediate survival.
September 3rd, 2005 at 6:43 pm
In the old days (late1800′s) in Alaska and Canada trappers and such would leave food in rock carns for future use. It was an immoral thing to do to take this food but if you were in a life threating situation it was OK to take half of it but never more. It was the “code of the North.” Ask anyone who has read Jack London.
September 4th, 2005 at 9:45 am
In Alaska and elsewhere, it was also common practice that if one came upon an unoccupied cabin in a storm or other difficulty, it was acceptable to use the cabin provided you restored, as best you could, any provisions you used, and left it in at least as good condition as you found it.
And if you couldn’t restore provisions, you left a note explaining why and offering to try to pay back later if you could.
Same basic premise, I believe.
September 4th, 2005 at 7:41 pm
Food or a plasma TV (or a bus), it is looting. But food and water may be forgiveable looting, just as there is such a thing as justifiable homicide. And if some DA decides to prosecute, it would be a good time for jury nullification, right?
September 17th, 2005 at 11:39 am
Looting is looting no matter who dose it and all looters should be arrested and if a person or buisness owner should catch looters in their place of buisness then they should be allowed to shhot the looters as was said in florida after hurricane andrew YOU LOOT I SHOOT