“This was going to happen with or without us,” he says. “First thing, we decided we’d be respectful. I told our staff, ‘Let them write on the pavement and on our neighbors’ walls. Let them bring whatever they want to bring and leave it wherever they want to leave it. We’ll figure it out later.'”

“The throng . . . spray-painted and Sharpied . . . every available surface, mostly in English, but also in Spanish and Italian, along with the consonant-rich dialects of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Arabic characters flowed on downtown L.A.’s sidewalks next to Japanese kanji. [Soon] there was no room left on the streetlights and storefronts.”

You’re thinking about rioting and property destruction in Los Angeles, right? Actually this was a Sports Illustrated report about the public response to Kobe Bryant’s untimely death. It took local property owners around the Staple Center weeks to clean up and repair.

What struck me as I read the report is the disregard so many people now have for private property. Whether mourning the loss of a local sports legend, or expressing anger over the death of a criminal suspect at the hands of overzealous or malevolent police officers, or just enjoying an opportunity for mayhem, these young, urban people do not even consider that the property they are defacing or destroying actually belongs to somebody who worked hard, saved and invested. Maybe somebody who looks just like them. Maybe their moms and dads.

It’s a leading indicator of our country’s slide toward Marxism and Communism, where all property (except that belonging to the elite leaders) belongs to the government so nobody is responsible for damage. The police, at the direction of local government, will not protect private property or allow us to protect it ourselves, and even public monuments and buildings fall prey to angry mobs.

Think of Cabrini-Green, the government housing project in Chicago that in the 1960s became a violent, third-world shit-hole because its residents had no ownership, no “skin in the game”.

If you are an American who has worked, saved, and invested in a home or business, and are relying on your constitutional guarantee of property rights, don’t blink – we are 116 days from an election that could turn the American Dream on its head.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side