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Watching the chaos of 2020 should make it clear to everyone that there are fundamental values required for civilization, and a high percentage of people don't comprehend them.
For example, property rights. Most conservatives and libertarians understand the importance of property rights on a basic level, but it seems like a great number of people think they should be entitled to take whatever they want from anybody else.
Without property rights, you just have people stealing from each other constantly, which then disincentivizes productivity. After all, why invest time and energy in building anything or excelling at anything if your only reward will be to have the fruits of your labor stolen?
We hear about these cops who are quitting because Blacks are going to riot if they merely do their jobs. Then I read about a firefighter who's out risking his life to put out fires, and thieves used it as an opportunity to steal his wallet and drain his bank account.
People who put their lives on the line for the public good perform an invaluable service, but when the risks outweigh the rewards, even the noblest men are going to check out. Next time there's a fire, you may not have anyone to extinguish it.
Low trust really is hell on earth. When you can't have reasonable assurance of safety, going about your daily life is constant stress. Similarly, without reasonable assurance that you'll be able to enjoy the rewards of your efforts, you're going to be unmotivated in life.
I tweeted yesterday about this talking point "why does White property matter more than Black lives?" It's because people's property is an extension of themselves, and in many cases, it's a pool of resources that sustains them.
If you try to burn down my house and I shoot you, you can't say "a person's life matters more than a house!" On the surface that may seem true, but you're also leaving me homeless and without most of my possessions, plus I incur the costs of restoring my life.
If you try to destroy my resources that I depend on to live, you can't then appeal to the principle that your life is more sacred than my property. Your initial violation proves that you disregard my life. Civilized people understand how these are all connected.
Just yesterday I was exchanging tweets with some guy who was apparently one of the rioters, and his defense was "they were just breaking into city hall! They weren't trying to burn it down!" As if that somehow makes what they did defensible.
Yes, life is sacred, but so is property. When you violate someone else's property rights, you're violating that person as a human being.
To use an example even the dumbest person can hopefully understand, what if a woman uses a gun to defend herself against a rapist? What's he going to say? "I only wanted to rape you, not kill you! This is excessive force!"? That would be ridiculous.
The sad thing is, I think most people understand these things instinctively, but the idea of being morally consistent is less important to them than getting what they want, whether that be resources or endorphins. People are good at rationalizing their way out of principles.
There's a lot of talk these days about boundaries, and how respecting boundaries is an important principle in human relationships. I agree with that, because it's all tied in to the principles I discussed above. A relationship where boundaries aren't respected is ripe for abuse.
And yet, many normies who talk about respecting boundaries looked at Trump's "build the wall" slogan and thought it was horrible. But it's the exact same principle: Just as you want your boundaries as a person respected, we want our boundaries as a country respected.
When there aren't clear distinctions of who owns what, all you get is people taking whatever they want, because they simply feel entitled to it. That leads to chaos, not order, and it dehumanizes us all.
The fact is, these rioters are just destroyers. They say it's about "justice" or something, but nothing they do presents any alternative to the status quo. It's all one big boundary violation that's meant to break your spirit.
Anyone who enjoys the benefits of First World society needs to realize that it didn't grow out of the ground; it took centuries of high-trust behavior and respect for property rights to achieve. All the chaos these animals are creating is antithetical to that.
So to come full circle from the first tweet in this thread, people who don't understand how civilization works are dangerous, because they can be easily goaded into destroying it at the provocation of very bad people. The US now has too many of them to feel safe.
