Criminal law ranks severity in order to, among other things, make the punishment fit the crime. We have murder, homicide, negligent homicide, justifiable homicide and manslaughter. Some or maybe all of these (did I mention I am not a lawyer?) have levels, 1st Degree, 2nd Degree, and so on. In all cases someone is dead. The deceased is unable to appreciate the subtleties associated with just how they got in that condition.
On the surface, stealing seems less dramatic. We have petty larceny, misdemeanor shoplifting, robbery, burglary and grand theft, some being felonies that can mean jail time. California is famous for making theft of anything valued less than $950 a misdemeanor, rarely investigated and never prosecuted. De facto, this makes anything you own having a value - to you - less than $950, free to anyone who can take it. Since your worth is the sum of all your actions, California is on the road making everything - including you - worthless.
A Death of a Thousand Cuts
We set aside, for now, the morality of the matter. The 8th commandment has not been amended to “Thou shalt not steal anything worth more than $950.” Also left to another day is the thorny issue of “Thou shalt not kill” as redundant, essentially stealing another’s life. Instead, we address incrementalism. Work is the act of trading a portion of your life in exchange for property. If the property you bought with part of your life is stolen, why is not the theft of a portion of your life incremental murder?
Security measures
To reduce the risk of theft you employ various security techniques and habits. You lock your door, you use a safe deposit box, you install an alarm system. You erect a [more] secure boundary around property you wish to protect. You build a wall.
These activities are not perfect, alarms and locks can be defeated, often easily and always easily by the most determined thief. Your security plans include electing a government to help protect your property, perhaps arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating thieves (good luck with that in California).
Theft can be in many forms, some less obvious than others. Suppose part of my work, therefore part of my life, goes for taxes to pay for a medical system important in my later years. Those later years arrive, and I find myself in a long line, waiting to receive the service I paid for and need, behind many others who paid nothing into the system. Why should I not feel just as violated by someone stealing my place in line as someone stealing my car?
Congressional Genius
Lately, politicians debated a law to close the border when crossings, legal or otherwise, exceed a certain number. Now, let me get this straight. The border that they cannot protect, seal or defend will magically close when some bureaucrat with a counter pushes the button a certain number of times? And, after this law is signed, the 10,000 (or 100,000?) people a day presently streaming illegally across thousands of miles of uncontrolled border will suddenly stop and began crossing only in front of the bureaucrat with the counter?
Politicians believe Americans are stupid.
Government as Accomplice: Oiling the Slippery Slope
Notice how tax “reform” always means tax increase? This is just another version. Congress wants to legitimize incremental illegal immigration, “allowing” some smaller number of people to break into the country and steal the property of its citizens than the number presently doing so. It is the Federal equivalent of California’s $950 rule. They call it “immigration reform.” California named its $950 rule “judicial reform.” Both are just the admission that the government cannot enforce its laws. In return for letting people steal just a little, so the theory goes, people will stop stealing. After all, they can’t steal the whole country. Really? Ask Neville Chamberlain in 1938: Give up Austria so Poland won’t be stolen. Worked great!
We have learned nothing.
I can walk into any store in California, fill a plastic bag with hundreds of dollars of merchandise and walk out without paying for it. I do not do it because it is unambiguously wrong. Our political division of late turns on those who want to work and keep the fruits of their labor and the remainder who want to give whatever you own to just anyone who happens to walk by. An invasion is an invasion. Illegal is illegal. Stealing is stealing in the small and the large.
If we are to have a country this must stop.