On the Subject of Redistribution …

David posted an article this morning: “The Impotent GOP Response to the IMF Redistribution of America’s Wealth”.

By coincidence I was reading on the same subject this morning … the redistribution part.

My source was not contemporary news, but rather a critique of unconstitutional behavior of the Supreme Court and US government … written in 1820.

The following excerpts are from “Construction Construed, and Constitutions Vindicated”, Section 12, by John Taylor:

The points presenting themselves … are, first, whether either the federal or state governments possess a right to distribute wealth and poverty, gain and loss between occupations and individuals. Secondly, whether the federal government possess this right. And thirdly, supposing both or either to possess such a right, whether it is wise, or honest, or beneficial to the United States, to exercise it.

Man, by nature, had two rights; to his conscience, and to his labour; and it was the design of civil society, to secure these rights. In the case of religious freedom, we have seen one right; in that of the freedom of property, our vision is not so clear; yet both, as natural rights, stand on the same foundation.

Our governments received man, animated by the creator, with a free will over his mind and his labour; and were instituted to protect the divine bounty. The freedom of conscience was made complete, because no contributions from that natural right were necessary for the support of civil government; but the freedom of labour was incomplete, from the necessity of such contributions.

The natural rights of labour, in subjecting themselves to contributions for the support of civil government, never meant to acknowledge themselves to be the slaves of a despotick power. These contributions were agreed to, for the purchase of protection, and not to establish a power for transferring the fruits of labour from one man to another.

Suppose the compact should say, that the government should have the power of taking away the life of one man for the private benefit of another, would this be a free government? But if it be silent upon the point, could the government exercise the power because it was not prohibited?

It is an evasion of the right to live, to take away the products of labour by which men live, and to give them to other men. If a government can take some, it may take all; and bad governments, by this species of tyranny, do often starve men to death. But there is no difference in the principle, whether men are partially starved, or quite starved, to enrich other men.

I cannot see any difference between taking away from a man one of his eyes, if it could be done, and giving it to another; or taking away and giving to another fifty per centum of his labour.

Yes, there is a lot more in this dusty volume from 1820 that is absolutely relevant to the evil we experience in our contemporary “civil society”.

Read

Understand

Resist

    
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DRenegade
Admin
12 years ago

“I cannot see any difference between taking away from a man one of his eyes, if it could be done, and giving it to another; or taking away and giving to another fifty per centum of his labour.”

Since the government is taking away more than fifty per cent of my labor and spending an additional 20% above which it takes in to devalue the remainder by another 20%, the government has taken one of my eyes and partially blinded the remaining one. Redistribution has taken our labor and our freedom without nary a whimper from the sheeple.

LT
LT
12 years ago

Dismiss all the politicians and bureaucrats. Try them for their crimes, and for their punishment make them slaves, and work them to death… Better them than our children!