Life. Property.

Any student of political science knows property matters. To believe this, to feel this, is something different.

I'm not a small business owner, though I am employed by one. So while the property isn't mine, I rely on it for my income.

"My" store was vandalized at 2:00 this morning. A large, heavy, urn sitting next door had been hurled through the plate glass door. No one had set foot inside. Nothing was out of place. Nothing had been stolen. The owners, naturally, were the ones to get the call; the ones to come in, clean up, temporarily remedy the damage. Perhaps because it was a lovely spring morning, perhaps I wasn't fully awake, perhaps because it had been cleaned up the damage didn't strike me as immediately. I wasn't enraged. Disappointed, maybe.

My feelings simmered through the morning.

All day the ugly, albeit functional, slab of wood stared at me. The large bolts had been covered with bubble wrap and packing tape, to protect the general public. Where light should be, there was dark. And by the time I left work, my anger boiled over. How dare they! Regardless of whether the perpetrator was a drunken louse, a disgruntled former employee, or a random hoodlum, there is no excuse for stealing someone's security, their property. Even an impersonal act becomes personal when it has a negative impact on the property or liberty of an individual.

An attack on property should be no less offensive and is certainly no less violent than an attack on a person. An attack on property is an attack on a person.

Perhaps that is what is so repugnant about the corpulence of the federal government: the very idea that they can violate our liberty, our property, without thought or apology.