The Wellbeing Of Burglars

Lifted from the comments, an illustration of progressive ethics. Or, How dare you defend your home and loved ones from sociopathic intruders with long criminal histories:

An example of the kind of law that shifts me ever further from the Democratic Party. I am as opposed to this as it is possible to be opposed to anything. I find it abhorrent and suicidal. Almost religiously offensive. Laws like this create a society not worth caring about. https://t.co/4rqhiXFGYG

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) March 1, 2025

The bill’s sponsor, Rick Chavez Zbur, claims, “The bill’s goal is to prevent wannabe vigilantes… from provoking violence and then claiming self-defense after the fact.” Which suggests that finding intruders in your home, or breaking into your home, intent on thievery and God knows what else, is somehow not in itself an obvious provocation. Or a basis for vigorous self-defence.

Instead, the bill would oblige homeowners to “retreat” wherever possible, thereby reducing the risk of “force likely to cause death or great bodily injury” to the burglar or burglars, whose wellbeing is apparently a matter of great importance, if only to progressive lawmakers. This restriction is framed as a “safety” measure, albeit one that prioritises the safety of the criminal, who will presumably be enabled to continue his trajectory of repeated home invasion, but with reduced resistance and ever greater boldness.

But remember, wokeness is just about being compassionate.

Indeed, advocates of the bill claim that it “promotes racial justice.” Presumably, by giving extra chances, and extra leverage, to burglars who happen to be black. Because, well, magic blackness.

We’ve previously noted the progressive schtick of flattening values, such that predatory, habitual criminals and their victims, their numerous victims, are somehow equal in moral worth. As when “proud SJW” Zack Ford insisted that armed muggers who attack lone women at bus stops, and who do so while on probation, are every bit as valuable as their prey and should therefore not be endangered by any efforts by said women to resist them.

Likewise, when we were told – by Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender – that a dislike of having your home invaded by feral, malevolent predators, and having the lives of your family put in mortal danger, “comes from a place of privilege.” And that such violations are therefore by implication things we shouldn’t resist, and regarding which, even the thought of resisting is something we should feel bad about. On account of all that privilege.

Such are the convolutions of the progressive psyche.

Oh, and we mustn’t forget our ostentatiously agonised Guardian contributor Anna Spargo-Ryan, who wanted us to believe, all evidence to the contrary, that the gang of burglars who broke into her home in the middle of the night – the ones brandishing carving knives – are the real victims of the drama and should therefore be spared any meaningful consequence of their own chosen actions. Because, apparently, one should sympathise with the people breaking into one’s home and driving off with one’s stuff. In one’s own car.

However, it seems to me that the decision to forcibly violate someone’s home, generally at a time when the homeowner is at their most vulnerable, intent on predation and likely worse, and doing so for the umpteenth time, is precisely how you know that the intruder’s wellbeing is of very low importance. To assume that a home invader is anything less than an existential threat is, as seen in the links below, foolish in the extreme – and morally perverse.

It may be unkind – but it would not, I think, be unfair – to wish upon Mr Zbur and his fellow progressives some first-hand experience of the home-invasion scenarios that they would happily see others endure, passively and impotently, and sometimes not survive, supposedly in the name of “progress.” And fairness to burglars.

As Mr Burkett says in the X thread linked above, the level of moral wrongness is hard to overstate. It’s a mindset seemingly designed to devalue and demoralise the law-abiding, and according to which the law-abiding man must not presume to prioritise the safety of his loved ones, or himself, over the wellbeing of the sociopath violating his home. A sociopath who has almost certainly burgled others and who likely intends to burgle more, until forcibly stopped.

And contra our champions of progress, an obvious question comes to mind. If you wake to discover some conscienceless being with an extensive criminal history has broken into your home, violating an intimate and fundamental boundary, on what basis can you assume that no further, even fatal, boundary violations will occur? A lot is at stake, remember. And to make this jolly game a little more exciting, your heart is pounding, you’re still half-asleep, and you have but seconds to decide.

For readers curious as to exactly how much misery, fear, and social degradation a very small number of burglars can inflict on the world, on the better people around them, this item here may prove illuminating. In it, three prolific burglars, who between them had accumulated over 200 convictions, met their not-entirely-tragic end after colliding head-on with a lorry, while driving down the motorway at more than twice the speed limit, in the wrong direction, in a stolen BMW. Their fiery ceasing-to-be resulting in a rather significant drop in the local burglary rate.

An illustration, one of many, of how a very large fraction of crime could be prevented by dealing decisively with a surprisingly small number of persistent offenders.

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