Reporters standing in front of scenes of arson, flames billowing behind them, not very far from scenes of shooting and murder, insist that the protests are “mostly peaceful.” National Public Radio and a multi-billion-dollar global media conglomerate team up to bring you an illiterate “defense of looting.” The president comes to the defense of a dangerously stupid teenager who went looking for trouble illegally armed with a rifle in his hands and, to no one’s great surprise, found the trouble he was looking for.
The lesson of the summer is that intellectual and moral anarchy eventually bring with them political anarchy, that chaos in the democratic mind unleashes chaos in the streets.
Our friends on the left pirouette from position to position, desperate to please the mob. Consider a point of comparison: Only a few years ago, a bunch of irresponsible people who took out mortgages they could never hope to afford eventually lost their houses in foreclosures. People lost businesses, too. That was, we were assured, a national tragedy, an indictment of capitalism. But now the anointed mob is burning down homes and businesses, and progressives sniff that these losses are “just property.” Sometimes, property losses (those resulting from failure to pay a valid debt) are the cause of lamentation and the rending of garments, and sometimes property losses (those imposed by criminal violence) are no big deal.
A cynical man might suspect that such progressive posturing is not to be taken seriously.
In reality, it isn’t “just property.” It is mobs setting fire to homes with children in them. It is mobs shooting children to death. It is mobs shooting adults to death. It is arson that endangers the lives of innocent bystanders, firefighters, and other emergency workers.
It is also a near guarantee of long-term disinvestment from communities in which property is not secure. The same people burning down grocery stores today will be complaining about “food deserts” in 18 months.
But if it were “just property,” that would be bad enough.
Governments exist to protect property. That is what they are there for — life, liberty, and property, each of which is bound up in the other two. Property is the basis of liberty, and security in one’s property is a prerequisite of a decent society. Attacks on property are attacks on civil rights.
Property is necessary for the exercise of civil rights. Civil rights without property rights is a rhetoric, not a reality. The freedom of the press enjoyed by the New York Times is not worth $0.02 without the hundreds of millions of dollars in printing facilities and digital infrastructure that the newspaper relies on to actually disseminate the news. Burning that down would not be “just property” damage. If you can see that but cannot also see how looting a business involves more than “just property,” then you should go someplace quiet and think about it for a while, and pray fervently to whatever deity you believe in to reach down from the transcendent celestial realm and make you a little less stupid.
The answers are not on the radio.
But if there is a case to be made for looting, how about we start with NPR and its affiliates? The NPR Foundation reported holding $342 million in assets in 2018, and NPR’s management and on-air talent are splendidly compensated, many of them in excess of a half-million dollars a year. You can commission a shipload of lectures on income inequality and the salubrious effects of looting for that kind of “just property.” NPR’s headquarters on North Capitol Street in Washington, D.C., is “just property,” too — property NPR isn’t even much using at the moment, because of the epidemic. Would NPR object to someone burning it down to make a political point? Would looting NPR’s property be defensible? Yes? No? Why or why not?
A professional investor once said that in the short term, markets are dominated by greed and panic, but, in the long term, they are dominated by math. Politics in the short term may be dominated by tribal hatred and petty advantage-seeking, but politics in the (very) long term is dominated by ideas. Ceding the field of ideas in pursuit of short-term electoral gains is always an error, because vacating the field does not make it vacant — it only clears the field for other ideas, other articles of faith, other systems of values.
In the short term, the problem is the looting. In the long term, the problem is the defense of looting.
Because we live under the yoke of a post-literate culture, there are certain obvious truths that are effectively impossible to communicate to the mass population. Everybody who has ever dealt with the TSA should understand in broad outline what is going on with law enforcement in cities such as Minneapolis and San Francisco, that it is not only possible but common for public-security measures to be simultaneously excessive and insufficient, invasive and ineffective, heavy-handed and incompetent, corrupt and abusive and necessary, that criminal violence and police violence — and police corruption and political corruption — are genuine problems that are entangled with each another in complex ways. There are productive ways to respond to that. Burning down cities is not one of them. Tweeting hysterically about burning down cities is not one of them, either.
But the petulant children in Portland want only to play-act at being Jacobins, and the petulant child in the White House requires a full-time culture war lest he be forced to run for reelection on his record of spotless administrative excellence and confidence-inspiring leadership. If ever two clutches of fools deserved one another, these are they.
Life, liberty, and property: simple to say, difficult to achieve — and still more difficult to achieve if you have forgotten how and why to secure them or never understood in the first place.
I was starting to think it was just me but evidently the vast majority of commentors find this article to be a piece of crap as I do. This is not what I expect from the AMAC.
What are the RINOS so afraid of that they are willing to vote with the dims and against their supposed conservative principles? This has been going on since Trump was the nominee, even before. Trump’s accomplishments seem to make no difference. Romney, McCain, and others, even McConnell is not comfortable with Trump, not to mention the writers/publishers of National Review and other so-called conservative outlets. What are they so afraid of? Thoughts?
I just signed up for Amac… after reading this article and especially the last two paragraphs, I’m wondering if that was a mistake…
CNN to AARP to AMAC, sad very sad. I’m grateful for the ‘trial membership” now I know!
Grouping, quid pro quo Joe Biden is more like the petulant child, by hiding in his basement playing with things!
Like others, I’m disappointed in AMAC for this article. To be honest I had some misgiving when we lost Dan Weber. Somehow, things seem to change when children take over a company or organization. I’m going to be watching carefully from now on. If more of these articles appear I will cancel my subscription.
One good thing about the article is the exposing how radical left NPR (National Public Radio) is. If more people understands this they will attempt to get it defunded. PBS (Public Broadcasting System) and the Endownment of the Arts should also be defunded. Let your politicians know.
I read this article a few days ago and re-read it now to see if I had mis-read it some how. This article was difficult to read censuses it was so atypical of AMAC reporting. I had to do a double take to make sure I was reading it in AMAC not some Left leaning organization. My first surprise was the way Kyle Rittenhouse was presented as a “dangerously stupid teenager looking for trouble”. And then to compare the President of the United States with rioters who are destroying blocks of businesses, Federal properties, historic landmarks, attacking innocent bystanders, injuring many and killing some and attempting to kill or injure more, setting cars and buildings on fire and destroying the economic livelihood of those that they say they are protesting for. President Trump has done more to help improve opportunities for the minority communities, in bringing more businesses into their towns and cities to provide more jobs and to improve economy of their neighborhoods, lower the unemployment numbers for Blacks and Hispanics to the lowest in history and keeping the promises he made in 2016. But the rioters are undoing all these advances, These rioters are not “petulant”-they are criminals. President Trump is not petulant, he is righteously angry over the destruction that is going on unabated. And angry about the lies, half truths and the smears that the main stream media has been printing and saying about him daily for almost four years now without any relief. As others have said, we are surprised that AMAC is putting forth such an article. We are used to the wisdom and truth we have had from Dan Weber and other excellent articles in the past. If we wanted this slant on the news, we would be reading the main stream media.
President Trump and Kyle Rittenhouse deserve an apology.
How does AMAC even think of posting such drivel? This author, in my opinion, has been, or still is, drinking the Nobummmmmmer kool-aid
The author is listed as “outside contributor.” I recently joined AMAC, among other obvious reasons, hoping to get away from people hiding behind anonymous destructive writing.
Recently, an anonymous source claimed Trump said something very bad about some of our war dead. The left has run with this unverifiable story as though it’s gospel. Un-named sources are chicken poop and don’t belong in the world of free men. AMAC must do better!
riots looting burning bring in fully armed active military & national guard add local and state police END IT !!!
One can be a Trump supporter AND be sad he acts like a child. Yes, he has done great things, and I will vote for him. But we can’t be afraid to call him out when he does childish, petulant things, such as his nicknames for others (like a 5-year-old). And his inability to admit he was wrong, such as when he said ON LIVE TV that John McCain was not a war hero and that he liked “The ones who didn’t get caught.” He should have immediately apologized to every veteran in America. But because he didn’t, now people believe it when a reporter writes that Trump called veterans “suckers and losers.” And he is petty, such as when a reporter asked him to say something about John Lewis, and the only thing Trump could come up with was, “He didn’t come to my inauguration.” A true statesman would have said something like, I didn’t agree with John in many cases, but he was a hero of the Civil Rights movement (which Republicans voted in favor of by a larger percentage that Democrats).
Acting as though the President has no flaws won’t help his re-election chances. And writing in this forum that bringing up these problems mean “You want Biden to be President!!!!” doesn’t help to have a proper discussion.
This story is trespassing and doesn’t deserve to be on AMAC. For a moment ,I thought I was on AARP”s page. I threw away my AARP card years ago to get away from liberal lies. I hope I don’t need to do the same with my AMAC card.
The person who wrote this article obviously knows that he is the only intelligent person on the planet and everybody on both sides of the situation should crawl in a hole and pull dirt over it. He should be very glad that I do not know him.
If the Republicans (intellectuals and office holders) of the authors Brand, who were the party majority for so long, had been doing their jobs for the last 25 years or so we would not now require a “petulant child” to save us and the American Republic at the eleventh hour. Bush, Romney, and Kristol types sold us a bill of goods. They cannot admit they were just out thought and out maneuvered as they sought consensus with their honorable political adversaries in polite parlors. All just good Americans doing their best for the country- he says sarcastically. While most of the author’s points are literately presented and logically convincing, the bulk of his message is lost on the AMAC audience by his dismissive Trump dig. It must be hard to breathe so high up on Olympus.
Worst article ever bu AMAC! Whom is the editor that piked it for publication. 99.9 % of media and social internet is crazy wrong. I would ask the “picker” and call into question his/her judgement!
wow! such fearmongering! burning children in their homes? not anywhere i have seen & i live in los angeles, ca where we have had both peaceful protests, rioting & looting. please show me & your brainwashed all-believing trumpettes photographic proof of this
This is disgusting! Are you kidding me? One more uber left article like this and I’m GONE from amac!
The National Review as founded & stewarded by Wm. F. Buckley, Jr., is to the present-day National Review as the former Democrat Party is to the present-day Progressive-Socialist Party.
Mr. Williamson describes the persecuted & victimized do-gooder, Kyle Rittenhouse, as “…a dangerously stupid teenager who went looking for trouble illegally armed with a rifle in his hands..”. NO, Williamson, Kyle didn’t go “looking for trouble,” he was trying to prevent trouble. The trouble found him and tried to attack him. Funny you don’t have a word of nasty condemnation for the riotous scum Rittenhouse was trying to thwart in their endless orgy of destruction & mayhem. I wonder why.
Oh, and just to polish your Never-Trumper credentials among your neo-con colleagues, you just Had to add a totally nasty comment about Pres. Trump, who is 10x the man you’ll ever be. Dangerously stupid, Williamson? Yeah, that describes you to a T.
I took a one year membership to Amac because I wanted to learn more about them. However, if there is one more article deriding our President, I won’t sign up for a second year.
Freedom of Speech. What is the old saying; (paraphrasing here) “I am willing to fight to the death to protect the Rights of men such as this to be able to say what he thinks, no matter how much I disagree with him”. Backatcha, Mr. Williams. I wore the nation’s uniform for 6 years just so you could spout your BS/HS/CS (various farm animals and their excrement). Petulant child in the White House? In many ways our President is an aggravation to many people in the country, and I seriously doubt he and I could be friends, but I firmly believe he has the best interests of the nation and its people in mind. I don’t see a Democrat politician out there sharing in those interests……
We aren’t electing a spotless, sinless Savior– we already have one of those. We are looking to elect a sane, rational leader, which Trump is, and Biden isn’t. We also want a person who values all “races” and skin colors, which Trump does and Biden doesn’t. AMERICAN LIVES MATTER! (Blacks are Americans too).
I firmly believe that if the Democrats succeed in taking over all three branches of the government, organizations such as AMAC will be perceived to be anti-American and will cease to exist. Could that be the reasoning of the people who allowed this piece to be printed, trying to assuage the left to prove in an unfriendly future that AMAC doesn’t really stand for conservative values? Besides the fact that this writer called our president a petulant child, there are too many inconsistencies in the entire piece to be valid arguments.
I so wish that articles of this nature were forced on the entire population of America. None of the MSM explain that the reason for “food deserts” is the shop lifting and vandalism and general mayhem in those areas. NPR–I understand that these “public networks” have the most advanced, modern, equipment available. Now you tell me that there employees are some of the highest paid, yet our tax money still goes to support these anti-American networks. Thanks to AMAC for being a voice in the wilderness.
Petulant child?? If this president weren’t spending EVERY day trying to defend his actions, I feel certain a lot of his tweets and the like would be non existent. The MSM never gives this president credit for ANY of his accomplishments. Period! It’s obvious to me and many below that this, struggle to call him author, is a NEVER TRUMPER! I agree w/the assembled below that the article above is nothing more than PAP! AMAC, wake up and smell the coffee before stuff like this article start costing you memberships! Please!
I read to the point where you attacked the TEENAGER who you say went looking for trouble with an illegal gun. Keep this up and I will remover myself from AMAC. The teen went looking for a place to help by protecting businesses from the mob. I am sure that you are too much of a coward to do something like that.
KEEP IT UP AND I WILL LEAVE.
If Amac is going to act like AARP and take a sharp turn to the left and left-thinking writers, just know that my membership here will be cancelled!
Spotless adminstrative excellence and confidence-inspiring leadership… exactly how I perceive the President. Well, the administrative excellence is marred by appointments of persons inimical to his vision. They have to be exposed and kicked out, but that is a point of administrative excellence. I will say the President has made some bad picks, but he is inexperienced in the Washington mind-set. Seems to be learning though.
Interesting there were no “petulant children” who attacked the man in the White House. Is tearing up the State of Union speech deserving of “petulance”? How about citing violence and assassination? Very one sided, eh? Just name all the people President Trump has attacked without being attacked first.
I felt like I was on some other website; why did AMAC run this article? So much of this article is infuriating unless I actually misunderstood most of it. This is so disappointing.
President Trump attempted to defund NPR,PBS but could not get the votes. Can you say ‘Rinos”?. They should defund those entities and also tell that cesspool (united nations) in new york to relocate outside the US.
I believe the discussion on property was well thought out and interesting. I had to read the last paragraph three times to ensure I read it correctly. Trump was responsible for Disbanding NAFTA, and destroying TPP. On just these two items Trump earns my vote. I suppose NR believes in a world order run from a star chamber in Budapest. The Bushes and Clinton’s at the helm. Then all will be right with the world. I just became a AMAC member, what a disappointment. Is the divide and conquer theory at work here. Yes, Trump is a loudmouth with a pride issue. Perhaps if I enjoyed all his successes I’d be to. Let him without sin cast the first stone. Trump 2020 !!!
Bull ! Progressive lies. I will not renew membership if I see anything more like this article. Conservative Amac members, stand strong .
Although I don’t agree with all of the author’s views, he has the right to express them, just as we have the right to disagree. AMAC has the right (maybe the obligation) to present differing points of view, so we can counter them.
I am not surprised by the author’s piece. I have read other articles by him. I am surprised to see it I AMAC. I joined because I wanted to see conservative fair information. This is not.
This artical is disgusting! It should be in Aarp NOT Amac!
What a disrespectful person to write about our President that way! The author sounds like an arrogant and spoiled brat! I want no part of Amac if this is what they will be printing! Anyone can read “This Trash” anywhere, we do not need it on Amac!
P.S. and just who is this unnamed ‘outsider’ who wrte this trash and slipped it to your inefficient editor. If AMAC wants to be a voice for loyal citizens of the USA, get rid of your treasonous staff members.
Did your Editor read this before he inserted it in this newsletter? 90% of the content is accurate, but blaming it ib President Trump is inexcusable. If AMAC is turning to Marxism, then I am out of here.
Another article like this and I will cancel AMAC in a flash! Asinine you would put such trash on your site! Dan Weber must be flipping in his grave!
“The president comes to the defense of a dangerously stupid teenager who went looking for trouble illegally armed with a rifle in his hands and, to no one’s great surprise, found the trouble he was looking for.” WTF! How can you lump a young man trying to defend people and their property together with rioters?
“Everybody who has ever dealt with the TSA should understand in broad outline what is going on with law enforcement in cities such as Minneapolis and San Francisco, that it is not only possible but common for public-security measures to be simultaneously excessive and insufficient, invasive and ineffective, heavy-handed and incompetent, corrupt and abusive and necessary, that criminal violence and police violence — and police corruption and political corruption — are genuine problems that are entangled with each another in complex ways. ”
Don’t blame TSA agents for their techniques in approving who can board an airplane. They are told how to do their job. Law enforcement officers don’t make laws and do not get to pick and choose which laws they enforce.
Where did they GET this guy?
What the H*ll is going on there at AMAC? I’ve never seen AMAC Trump bashing. I think y’all owe your subscribers an explanation.
The Dums are now down to their last frantic manuvers. Today, they dusted off their 3 year old BS about the president condemning
those who died in battle. As usual, the propaganda machine is in full force repeating the same alarm words. Sad , really, because they
still don’t understand that no one is paying attention. Who listens to CNN ? or MSDNC? We are witnessing their last gasps. Will they leave
the country when Trump wins ? No. Will they commit suicide ? Probably not. They need to reconsider leaving the US or death.
Get ready Dums. This is a landslide. 75 million + Trump votes.
I have to agree with most of these comments. I was surprised by this editorial, coming from AMAC. I don’t concede that Kyle Rittenhouse was entirely wrong, and I definitely do not agree that POTUS is a child, nor does he require this culture war to win.
couldn’t get thru the article without a pop up STOP IT
Whoever at AMAC allowed these LIES is/are traitors who should be fired!! National Public Radio are Communist collaborators trying to destroy our Country!! Become a Counter-Revolutionary!!! Stand-up for America!!!! Remove Every Democrat!!!!!
National Public Radio are Communist collaborators trying to destroy our Country!! Become a Counter-Revolutionary!!! Stand-up for America!!!! Remove Every Democrat!!!!!
We are in the middle of a Communist Revolution!! There are excuses for riots and looting. They are ALWAYS criminal!!! Excuses are collaborating with the Communists!!!! Become a Counter-Revolutionary!!! Stand-up for America!!!! Remove Every Democrat!!!!!
Trump wants to take away Fed funds to Democratic cities that have riots/protests. It seems to me that will take more dollars away from funding their police department. Seems backward thinking to me.
Y’all need to observe that we don’t have much of this burning and looting in Texas. That’s because we actually believe in the 2nd Amendment. You try to do damage to somebody’s house here, and they will actually shoot you. Most likely, they will actually know how to shoot and unlike many cops across this nation, they won’t need a full magazine to hit and drop you. And, unlike many places across the fruited plane, they won’t be prosecuted for defending their home. THAT, folks, is FREEDOM!
“The petulant child in the White House did not start this culture war. I would suggest that it is the insidious result of decades of the “progressive” agenda which supports the destruction of minority family structures, morality and religious tenants as well as the rule of law. Donald Trump is the POTUS and truly focused on stabilizing the corruption that is now embedded in the swamp. I’m also disappointed that Amac posted this authors foolish diatribe …