Posted on 12/19/2012 1:53:21 AM PST by neverdem
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...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The DEMOCRATIC PARTY has ALWAYS been the party of SLAVERY.
Nothing has changed.
The 13th Amendment forbids the theft they commit in the name of “social justice” -
“Neither Slavery nor INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE shall exist in the United States unless for a crime or punishment.”
A tax on one’s income, no matter the rate, is by definition slavery. The only issue is the degree - a 100% tax rate is the same as the practice that was abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation.
Neither Slavery nor INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE shall exist in the United States unless for a crime or punishment.
I guess we have to chalk it up to punishment. Too bad so few are able to see it for what it is.
Democrats and liberals consider industiousness as a felony of the highest order.
I’ll never own my home outright even though my debt to the bank has been paid. I pay rent to the town for services I never use. If I don’t pay I’m evicted.
Difference between Lincoln and Obama:
Lincoln freed the slaves
Obama is enslaving the free
Great logic, but Liberals don’t understand logic. It doesn’t make sense to them because they are emotionally driven. You might as well be explaining geometry to a donkey.
If the donkey could talk he would say, “You’re a lying racist, animal hater”. End of conversation.
Yet, even a donkey uses geometry, as he knows the shortest distance to the food trough is a straight line, but you’ll never get him to admit it.
We all know that liberals are hypocrites. One of the most striking examples of this hypocrisy is their erroneous claim to being champions of freedom generally and for having freed the Southern slaves. While they continue to rewrite history and lay claim to these accomplishments, they have simultaneously reconstituted and elevated slavery to a whole new level - state run slavery. Labeling liberals and their socialist agenda as nothing more than state slave masters is entirely accurate. When undressed, the socialist agenda is nothing more than the state as overseer laying claim to the fruits of a laborer through force. It makes no difference if the slavery is instituted by the government (actually it is much more venal as state sponsored) or the property is confiscated under force (robbery) for purposes of redistribution. If I take my gun and rob the local bank at Christmas to give the proceeds to the children’s orphanage, it is still armed robbery. Stripped down to its bare essentials redistribution of wealth is state run slavery plain and simple, and liberal socialists need to be told this over and over again.
The problem with this argument is that capitalism is also based on the exploitation of one person’s labor for another’s profit. After all, doesn’t your employer sell the products of your labor for more than their cost?
That argument is rather ignorant. I really hope you’re being facetious, intentionally obtuse, or “playing liberal” just to get a reaction.
The relationship between employed and employer is voluntary.
If you want to sell the products of your labor for more, sell them directly, IF YOU CAN.
The relationship of slavery, be it traditional slavery, or government imposed slavery, and is imposed by force. Big difference.
You have the notion of profit all backwards.
The owner of a small business invests time, money, sweat and tears in his company - plus the worry of having to make the payroll. The employee then profits by earning an hourly wage.
My 7 yr old gets it.
Slavery is the forcible taking of the fruits of your labor.
It doesn’t matter if that forced taking is 100% or 10%, it’s still immoral.
Serves all of us slave-owning whiteys right.
Oh, wait...
Your points are all valid and yes, i was playing liberal’s ... er, I mean Devil’s ... advocate. However, the moral argument against redistribution must nessarily ddress the “labor theory of capital” that formed Marx’s core condemnation of capitalism. Your labor is exploited by an employer to add value to materials. The product is then sold for more than the cost of the materials and labor and the employer captures the excess as profit (capital). While any employee’s participation may be voluntary, his participation in the capitalist system is not. Don’t participate and you starve to death.
One key difference between redistributionist slavery and capitalism is the freedom of the former to chart one’s own course and to freely determine who benefits from the “exploitation.” That beneficiary can be the state, an employer, or oneself. Redistributionism only allows the benefits to accrue to the collective — the state.
same difference.
The only reason a business owner invests in a business is to make money, which he does by selling the fruits of his workers’ labor for more than he pays those workers. Thus, he exploits the labor of others for his own benefit, which this argument holds is immoral.
What is missing is the reality that the “exploitation” takes place both ways, and that in fact, both parties benefit from being exploited. It’s a balanced symbiosis ruled by natural market forces, not the coerced “altruism” of redistributionism.
Too busy today to respond in depth...
But, during the election, I suggested several times that candidate Romney should start asking Obama what specific tax rate percentage equaled slavery.
I assumed Obama, if he responded at all, would flippantly say 100%.
In which case Romney could respond, “So, a 95% tax rate is NOT slavery?”
Entitled to what other people have produced,or as the democrat party calls it EARNED entitlements.
Higher taxes to ensue.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.