OPINION:
One day, when I was working as a reporter at a small newspaper, a colleague came into the office with a brand-new, very expensive camera he had just bought.
For a struggling journalist, it seemed like an outsized purchase. When I asked how he could afford it, he chuckled and said, “Easy. Insurance paid for it.”
Insurance?
“Sure. I broke a window on my car and then reported to police that a thief had taken a camera just like this one.”
“You broke your own window? And was the camera you said was stolen as good as this one?” I asked.
“Hardly,” he said. “There wasn’t any camera in the car.”
“So, you lied and ripped off the insurance company?”
“Why not? They rip us off every day and make millions off us.”
I was stunned by his moral ambivalence and the way he rationalized his thievery. By his reasoning, you could justify any theft from a large corporation.
In fact, that has become a rampant theme today, so much so that a New York Times editor, Nadja Spiegelman, coined the term “microlooting” to describe stealing from large corporations and feeling fine about it.
From people such as university professors and progressive politicians, we have heard a litany of rationalized wrongdoing that goes like this: Victims of an unfair system are entitled to get what is coming to them, and so are the perpetrators on the wrong side of social justice.
On a large scale, think of the looting in any leftist-inspired riot, such as the George Floyd “unrest” in 2020, that liberals largely excused as an understandable reaction.
A shocking number of people have made a folk hero out of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood on Dec. 4, 2024, on a midtown Manhattan street.
Mr. Mangione, who did not even have a UnitedHealthcare policy with a disappointing claim result, allegedly shot Mr. Thompson in the back. That is the act of a murderous coward, not a hero.
Yet Mr. Mangione’s legal team has raised about $1.5 million so far from donations from people who feel the shooting was justified. Thousands of people have sent him letters and gifts, and the “Free Luigi” movement has held rallies outside the New York courthouse. The internet is full of T-shirts, tote bags and merchandise with his image and the slogan “Free Luigi.”
Mr. Mangione’s next court appearance is slated for Monday, with a flock of supporters expected outside.
In a recent Wall Street Journal column, “When Rationalization Turns Deadly,” psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert writes, “Once frustration is aimed at a broad target — corporations, the wealthy, the system — it starts to act like moral credit. … The question quietly shifts from, ‘Is this right?’ to ‘Who deserves it?’”
Last month, Hasan Piker, who is part of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s entourage, appeared on a New York Times podcast in which he justified the killing of Thompson, the father of two teenage boys.
“Friedrich Engels wrote about the concept of social murder,” Mr. Piker said. “And Brian Thompson, as the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder.”
Engels was Karl Marx’s co-author of “The Communist Manifesto” and other collectivist works. Their communist worldview has directly caused unfathomable misery, including the murders of more than 100 million people during the 20th century alone.
Mr. Piker has said, “America deserved 911,” called the American flag “a symbol of terrorism and oppression” and described America and Israel as “evil.” He has jokingly floated the idea of “killing landlords,” said “billionaires should be guillotined” and that straight, White males are “the most privileged group in human history.”
This goes down like butter among the lunatic fringe, such as the “transtifas,” a transgender anarchist movement implicated in many recent murders and terrorist plots. Mr. Piker is also a hero to the antisemitic “From the river to the sea” crowd that openly wishes for another Holocaust.
Despite these extreme views (or perhaps because of them), Mr. Piker is quite welcome in Gracie Mansion, where Mr. Mamdani is busy turning New York City into a version of North Korea, albeit with Broadway plays.
Someday, perhaps not until the afterlife, these men will have to face a justice system that cannot be manipulated.
“Most people don’t need to be told that stealing, much less murder, is wrong,” Mr. Alpert wrote in his Journal column, adding, “It isn’t just a failure of knowledge but a failure of restraint.”
Indeed, the Apostle Paul wrote in the Book of Romans that people of faith and those of no faith are “without excuse” because God’s natural law is “written on their hearts.”
The problem with aiding and abetting immorality is that it comes back to bite you.
During my college days, one of my off-campus roommates often surprised me with his carefree thefts. When one of his car’s hubcaps disappeared, he found a similar car in a school parking lot and stole a matching hubcap from it.
“I needed it, so I took it,” he told me with a shrug.
After graduation, he went on to law school and then founded a small business. Without any irony, he lamented to me about the biggest problem he faced: dishonest employees who stole from him.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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