If I am out for a walk and there is a piece of chicken on the ground, I take it. I don't "loot" it. Nobody else wants it, it's there, I'm hungry, and that's that. Even if someone else does want it--okay, let's say it's even not on the street but oh, say, in the hand of a well-fed human being who clearly is not as desperate as I am because if he/she were, he/she would have eaten it already... I, meanwhile, am at brink of starvation, and possibly will not survive until the end of my walk if I do not get that piece of chicken now. So how can we talk about property rights, about looting, when this is a matter of self-preservation? Of life and death?
Rules about trespassing and private property go out the window when...oh say...every window in the entire country is broken, and all the buildings in which said windows were found is in rubble on the ground. People and dogs of Haiti: if I could send you the next piece of chicken I find, I would.
1 comment:
Well-said. Makes me think of the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina, where one photo was captioned as "survivors flee after looting a store in the aftermath" and another as "survivors make their way carrying supplies they recovered from the wreckage." Guess what the only difference in the photographs was? Go ahead, guess.
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Jack@PDB
dog beds and more
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