Redistribution as Slavery

The idea that we should take from those who have and give to those who don't is viewed as proper and just among liberals. In fact, if you do not subscribe to redistribution ideology, you are attacked as being greedy at best and racist at worst. The problem is that income redistribution in practice promotes one of the same moral injustices found under slavery.

As Thomas Sowell put it: "Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state."

If morality is defined by private property, meaning that a person has a right, based on natural law, to their person and their possessions, and if property is generated by the productive and wealth creating behavior of a person's labor, then it follows that it is an infringement on an individual's rights to use any force (murder, theft, rape, etc) to injure or take away one's property. Using the productivity of another for one's personal gain is immoral.

We can then extrapolate from this premise. If taking the productive output of a slave and using it for another's personal gain is immoral; then taking the productive output of any worker and using it for another's gain is also immoral, no matter what race, color, gender, or socio-economic status the producer happens to be.

Logic leads us to one conclusion. A modern form of slavery has been embedded within the welfare state. And no matter how you slice it, property theft to promote a false ideology of "fairness" or advance a twisted form of "compassion" to gain power is abhorrent. It does not matter how many ribbons and bows decorate the rhetoric of "Robin Hood" redistribution, the final analysis is the promotion of servitude.

Redistributive ideology is not about a safety net for the truly needy or the necessity of government to tax in order to perform its proper functions of protecting people, property, and enforcing the rule of law. President Obama may call redistributive efforts "economic justice," or "economic rights," but in the end, using the power of the state to confiscate property is as immoral as taking the wealth created by a slave to benefit the slave owner.

Those on the left will look you straight in the eye and profess they defend liberty and property; but one need only to read the words of the president in regards to his definition of "social justice."

"I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody"

"I actually believe in redistribution"

"Spreading the wealth around is good."

'Bring about significant re-distributional change"

"Actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change"

"I do not believe that those two things -- fair distribution and economic growth -- are mutually exclusive"

"I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts"

"The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society."

"I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change."

And of course the classic lines "You didn't build that" and "those who do not pay their fair share" underline the president's belief that private property is available to be confiscated while ignoring the unalienable rights defined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

By advancing the welfare state and income redistribution through class warfare, one of the basic intellectually inconsistent ironies of liberalism is exposed: the indefensible practice of trying to defend equality and the dignity of man by violating the human rights of those very people you claim to be defending. The hypocrisy of the left knows no boundaries.

Far too many Americans have shed blood to protect the sacred rights of life, liberty and property. History reminds us the Civil War's fight to end the abuse of human dignity embodied in slavery was a victory that came with a high price.

The nation's current trajectory of wealth redistribution will eventually polarize the citizenry, creating the conditions for an open conflict between the takers and the makers for the simple reason that entitlement creates resentment. Americans must find moral clarity on property rights within the framework of law and republican tradition before inevitable political and social deterioration completes its work and a violent resolution is all that remains.