Those who make a living by looting are part of the body of the apostate angel. When St. Augustine was dying, 80,000 armed Vandals, led by Genseric, crossed from Spain into North Africa and moved East. When they got to the city of Hippo, in 430, they starved it into submission. By torturing anyone who looked as if they had anything, they uncovered every possible buried trove. According to St. Augustine, “Men who were formerly wealthy landowners were suddenly no different than beggars.” Some of those who lost everything had come to North Africa to escape Alaric’s sack of Rome twenty years earlier. Those unfortunates were twice impoverished by looters.

Smarter, long-term looters make much more, over time, by looting their own taxpayers. If Genseric and his Vandals had been more far-sighted, they would have looted as Assyrians, Hittites, Greeks, and Romans did, leaving the basic structures in place and forcing the existing rich and powerful to collect their taxes for them instead of the earlier government establishment.

The two types of looters, foreign and domestic, both hate their neighbors. Both are repugnant. Castro, a domestic looter, was much worse for the Cubans than an invasion of Venezuelans would have been.

Lesser looters are motivated by greed for gold and ill-gotten gains. The worst are driven by ideology. They are motivated by hate, taking not only life, freedom, and money, but also, destroying every good thing that they can.

As we see what is happening in Europe, where bribed politicians are allowing foreign invaders to loot their own neighbors, we can foresee that the established beachheads of looters are about to be reinforced by vastly larger armies of foreign looters.

All Europe will be as it was when Constantinople became Istanbul. People, too distracted by Imaginary Problems to comprehend their real dangers, do not notice that they are living at the end of an ever-shortening rope.

Author's Notes:

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