As Order Recedes

 Rod Dreher describes his interview with a South African here. I'm not sure if you've kept up with what's going on in South Africa, but the place is devolving into chaos. Power lines are cut as brigands loot them for the copper, water lines are dug up for the metal in the pipes and order is breaking down in the cities.

The most interesting part of the interview is this bit.

What about security? If the government falls into the hands of these radicals, they’re not going to leave you alone.

What you see in the small towns are neighborhood watches. Once a week, a man in a town will spend the whole night driving around in a car with a spotlight. Many of these neighborhood watches cooperate with the police. That is one solution.

The bigger the town gets, the easier it is to build gated communities. This is very, very common in cities like Pretoria. If enough people pay, you can gate off your community and have control over who comes in and who goes out. This is part of the solution in some places.

In South Africa, you see a lot of people arming themselves. Developing weapons proficiency is a very important thing. Most of my friends are pursuing their gun licenses at the moment. This is especially important when you get married. You don’t want to wake up, unarmed, and find someone in your house. We also have a hunting culture, so having guns is very natural.

All of that combined is what state-proofing means.

That describes how small kingdoms arose after the fall of the Roman Empire. As the Imperial troops left, previously civilized areas had to fend for themselves. Every time I see riots like the ones in Chicago and NYC recently or organized theft and shoplifting like we see in several large cities, I think about how I would prepare to protect myself, my family and my property if I lived in a nearby suburb. 

As the businesses are driven bankrupt or simply up and leave, the looters will have to wander farther afield. I can't tell if that's paranoia, confirmation bias from listening to some Daily Wire podcasts, or a rational concern.

In South Africa, at least, it's a rational concern.