Posted on 08/25/2008 9:29:40 PM PDT by goldstategop
Earlier this month Andrew Sullivan, a well-known writer, once in the center, now on the left, nominated me for what is apparently his lowest badge of distinction for defending citizens who shoot to wound graffiti vandals, or "taggers," while committing their vandalism.
Under the heading, "Malkin Award Nominee," Sullivan provides a quote from my radio show:
"'So you will now say -- I hear the voice of an ACLU member -- 'Dennis, do you think that this guy should have shot these people spray painting graffiti on his shop?' To which my answer is yes. I do. Not to kill. Not to kill. But if he shot them in the legs or in the arms I would have considered the man one of the great advancers of civilization in my time. And that is what divides left from right. Because anybody on the left hearing this would think that this is barbaric whereas I consider not stopping these people in any way that is necessary to be barbaric.' -- Dennis Prager, on his radio show."
Mr. Sullivan provides no commentary because, as I predicted in the excerpt he cites, what I said is so obviously morally offensive to him, no commentary is necessary. It is self-indicting.
To those on the left.
Their differing reactions to graffiti vandals further clarify the philosophical differences between liberals and conservatives.
Reactions to graffiti on the cultural left -- not necessarily the political left, since liberal politicians must respond to public outrage or they are not re-elected -- have generally ranged from support to indifference.
Many on the left have long described graffiti as "urban art" and graffiti vandals as "artists." Even when not admired or even defended, most liberals regard graffiti in far less negative ways than do conservatives. Conservatives tend to regard graffiti as an assault on society, perpetrated by pathologically narcissistic lowlifes bent on undermining the foundations of higher civilization.
To personalize this for a moment, while I assume that graffiti troubles Sullivan, I strongly doubt it troubles him nearly as much as it troubles me. If it did, the odds are he would not be a man of the left.
Why are so many on the left not as angered by graffiti as most conservatives are? I would like to offer some possible reasons:
One is that liberals find it difficult to condemn the poor, especially poor members of ethnic and racial minorities. If rich white kids spray painted their names on university buildings, there would probably be a liberal outcry.
A second reason is that crimes against property tend to disturb the left less than the right, especially when "no one is hurt"; and graffiti is deemed by many liberals as a classic example of no one being hurt. That is why I suspect that most people on the left would express greater anger toward someone who lit up a cigarette in a mall or a restaurant than toward an inner city kid who spray painted his initials on neighborhood walls and signs.
A third reason is that conservatives tend to view higher civilization as more fragile than the left views it. Conservatives believe the line between civilization and barbarism is under constant assault and is not necessarily enduring. That is one reason the right tends to have a higher regard for the police than does the left. Conservatives see the police as "the thin blue line" that separates civilization from barbarians.
So, it is natural that conservatives would see graffiti as vandalism, as an undermining of the very notion of higher civilization, as a public scorning of the common good, as essentially an "F---- you" to society.
Liberals are far more inclined to see graffiti as a mere nuisance, or even as an example of the downtrodden trying to have a voice in a civilization that oppresses young people who are usually members of historically oppressed minorities.
To the conservative, graffiti is an assault on civilization; to the liberal, graffiti is the result of civilization's assault on those who paint the graffiti.
For those who share Sullivan's political and social values, the notion that someone would defend a man who shot and wounded graffiti vandals defacing his property is worthy of derision. Sullivan is so sure his readers have contempt for such a view that he felt it unnecessary to offer a word of commentary on what I said.
That is unfortunate. I would be interested to know how Sullivan regards taggers and what he would suggest be done to them if caught in the act of defacing property. Since most people suspect that calling the police would achieve little, if anything, what should be done?
My first wish is that taggers be arrested and punished. I also wish for world peace and a cure for cancer. But the real-life choice is almost always between taggers getting away with their vandalism and an irate citizen taking action. Given the destructive nature of tagging -- the moment one sees graffiti, one knows one has entered a largely lawless and violent environment where thugs terrorize innocents -- I prefer something, even if violent, rather than nothing be done.
I have no desire to see a graffiti vandal killed -- my position has always been that only those who cause death deserve death (that is why I oppose the death penalty for any crime except murder). But if enough taggers are wounded, their assault on civilization will decline dramatically. And if one accidentally dies? That would be a tragedy. But here is the bottom line: More innocent people will die if tagging is not stopped than if it is. Graffiti unchecked leads to worse crime.
Those who deface private and public property are not otherwise decent kids who are oppressed and not allowed any other form of self-expression. My sense is that the vast majority of graffiti vandals are headed toward, if not already involved in, a life of sociopathology, including violence.
Indeed, increasingly those graffiti vandals do engage in violence. Citizens who so much as flash their headlights or yell at them to stop have been shot and sometimes murdered.
As in so many other areas, with regard to taggers, right and left see life through opposing moral prisms. On the left, the tagger is viewed as society's victim; on the right, society is viewed as the tagger's victim.
I’m settin’ that up right now. The kids have been stayin’ off the streets by cuttin’ through backyards. I put in motion sensor lights in back yesterday. Thinkin’ about trip lines and disposable flash cameras for in front. I’d like to have the motion sensors set off an alarm. Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
Better yet, get a game trail camera. Digital pictures with infrared flash. Trip wires are for booby traps.
I was hoping someone would bring up the rock salt in a shotgun idea. Beans may sting, but salt embedded under the skin BURNS!
I have watched taggers in action and have called the police. They are too fast for regular police enforcement. I have watched taggers come by foot, bike and car. Sometimes they work along or in a group. Their actions and times they hit property are too sporadic for stake outs. The most effective method would be to snipe the terror punks from the distant shadows. Open season on taggers would solve a problem that is costing the taxpayers millions but here in California there are so many gang members and their supporters that this type of activity would result in an escalation of violence and civil war. If your caught shooting and killing a gang member for tagging, the ACLU would make sure that you would go to the head of the line on death row.
Yeah, well your assumed 'Right' ain't going to stop my bullet. Better remember to tell your kids that not everyone believes like you do before they find out on their own.
They do in Texas
Graffiti is one of the processes by which the social infrastructure of our society is destroyed, just as is racial tension, promiscuity, lawlessness, the assault on morality and pretty much everything the left supports, enjoys or engages in. Without all of these things they can not break down this country, and would not be able to rebuild it in the Stalinist mold they so worship. It is natural that they would support graffiti and abhor anyone who might try to stop it.
To a liberal, beset with feeling of guilt, graffiti is Art, and a brave expression of downtrodden minorities. It is to be welcomed and encouraged, and even supported with taxpayer money.
The graffiti started in my old neighborhood about a year before the daylight burglaries, car breakins and thefts and other vandalism started. Right about the same time taxes doubled on my “gentrified” old neighborhood, moving old residents out and 20-somthings in.
Graffiti is like an ad campaign that says, “we don’t look out for the neighborhood and you can get away with anything.”
I agree. Shoot ‘em.
You have to get 5 seconds of video of them tagging and then it's legal to hit them in the ass.
And provide police as guides and escorts to protect the tagger bagger.
Time to bring back tar-and-feathering.
Change that to "other people's property". I know of no one on the left who would remain indifferent to, let alone welcome, the defacement of their own house or car.
Key word I imagine is "BUY"...
although lethal force is not something to be considered lightly, the fact remains that property = life, albeit small increment of life, but life nontheless...
so when someone destroys/steals a piece of my life, my options only include voluntary doubling of my damages by 'buying' the materials to cover suface damages and also spending more of my life at the labor to do so???...hardly...
that doesnt even touch a situation as Dr. B's where live trees had irreversible damage done, nor does it differentiate between the 'kids being kids' and the border markings of violent thug wannabes...
All that said, train yer kids to respect other peoples property lest they get shot by a hard working citizen and gilbo gets seated on the jury...
LFOD...
There is no need to debate this issue any further than to inquire whether the "liberal" who defends graffiti lives in a house whose walls are thus "decorated." And, even if so, if he is willing that anyone who comes along should redo the decoration to suit themselves at their every whim.The reality is that graffiti is an announcement of lawlessness, and a denigration of the rights of others. The people who defend it are a bane on society, even as the perpetrators of it are.
And Stocks! Go Colonial on their a**es. LOL.
“...They’re urban terrorists destroying my town....”
Agree totally. Watched my old neigborhood go - and it WASN’T from us (as kids).
Graffitti started cropping up as the dirt and druggers moved in, and the old city row-home neighborhood that I loved went to hell as the working class/middle class residents moved out.
Most of it was gangbanger tags, and other garbage from some “underprivileged” and “oppressed” types who just had to “express themselves” on other people’s property.
Then the small businesses moved out - the owners got tired of having to clean the tags off, repair the broken windows and retaliatory tagging, etc. Then the large businesses left.
And then the new underprivileged and oppressed residents complained that there was nowhere to work....and it was someone else’s fault (Whitey)...and the Thug mayor and Thug City Council had to raise taxes to pay for the additions to the welfare rolls, etc., etc., and said Thug mayor complains to his buddy, who is the Governor (and former mayor of the city) who promptly decides to try to push a tax increase through, blah blah blah....
Same old story, in any Democrat-controlled city.
But as for shooting? Well, to my mind it’s a little extreme, as I will not clear leather or otherwise brandish unless my LIFE, my family, or other innocent lives are directly threatened.
However, I DO advocate paintballing the buggers with Skunk-juice filled flourescent paintballs - something suitably nasty, longlasting and persistent, painful, and extremely disagreeable, so that it makes EASY for the police to find them...and easy for their parents to boot their a*ses out of the house because of the stench. And if they come back again for revenge, well, then escalation of force as necessary and warranted, because they are initiating the action, not you.
But again - you have to catch them in the act. Not that easy.
Prager - shoot them to wound???? Obviously, he has VERY limited experience with guns, gun laws, and gun handling...
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