"It's More Than What It Is."

Yesterday the local radio news started talking up a story about a woman who killed a man. While she was 8 months pregnant. While she was in her apartment. With a 12 gauge. She shot him in the head. While he was in the parking lot. DRT. No charges have been filed, but the police have relocated her, for her own protection.

Wait, what?

He was stealing her car. In Texas (Houston). After dark. The State of Texas understands some things other places *cough*England*cough* don't. Things like, if you're stealing somebody else's stuff at night, you might have just earned yourself a shootin'. There's no reportage on it, but that car might have been her only way to get to her job, possibly the only source of income for her family of unspecified size. Taking the car might have meant an irreplaceable loss and subsequent destitution for that family. For the thief, it was a joyride or a quick few bucks. For the woman, that car might very well have been the only thing keeping her from sleeping on the streets with her kids. How much is THAT worth?

I thought it was pretty ironic that this came the day after a 'car-vs.-actions to protect' it story came up in my own life. One of the guys at work had, over the course of a few months 1) written on a bumper sticker on my car, 2) put a "do not use" tag on the tiedown hook under the trunk, and last week 3) Put a 5"x7" green "PUSH HERE" with a pair of hand icons on it, on the trunk. After each of these incidents, I jokingly tried to tell him to knock off. Friday I told him to take off the sticker (the writing had faded and the tag I can cut myself) and he didn't. I reminded him on Monday, and he again left the stuff on my car. I found a 10" x 10" DO NOT (picture of hands with circle/slash NO sign) PUSH HERE sticker and crossed out the HERE and wrote YOUR LUCK on the sticker (DO NOT PUSH YOUR LUCK). At lunch, I pasted the sticker on the windscreen of his car and used a corner of the sticker to attach the following note:

********
(his name here),

I've tried to be nice about it but you are not getting the fact that I am serious.

My car is not much too look at, but it is mine. It looked the way I had it, because that's the way I want it to look. It is not your car. It is not a park bench. It is mine.

It may not be too hip now, but it cost me the labor of a full half-a-year of my working life. That is what it represents to me. For you to go putting your idea of a joke on it, is a message to me of how little you respect my very LIFE.

I do not appreciate such an extreme level of disrespect. Heretofore, I have refrained from doing anything to your car because *I* do respect other peoples' property, and I am not a big fan of practical jokes even as payback.

Consider this your final warning. The next step for me is either to apply most of a roll of 3" packing tape to all the exterior surfaces of your car and maybe let the air out of all the tires, or to complain to the managmement and owners of our company, in writing, that you are vandalizing my car on company property.

Take the sticker off my trunk, and cut the tag off the tie down hook under the trunk. Don't do anything else to my car.

Or else.
********

The next time I saw my car, his decorations were gone. Being men, we didn't say anything about it on Tuesday, except that he told a joke about how did I like the banana in the tailpipe, and I said I thought I saw somebody put something on his car. Unspoken truce.

********

The point is, as one caller to the radio talk show this morning (still talking about that woman in Houston on the call-in shows) said: "It's More Than What It Is." The lefty host of the show was crying about how a car wasn't worth killing someone over, and the righty host was saying right: it's not worth YOU (i.e., the thief) dieing over. Longtime readers of Vote For David will be getting flashbacks at this point. You are vaguely remembering my First Principles post about the Rights to Life and Property. Go read that too, for more thoughts about the relationship between property and life, and to see how they can be the same thing.