Taxes and Freedom

President Obama is infamous for using lines like, "The rich need to pay their fair share," or "spread the wealth around." His recent budget speech was inundated with class warfare and claims that the "wealthiest" Americans need to "pay their fair share" and share in the "sacrifice." He even went on to say that social programs and other cornerstones of the leftist agenda are "what made America great." All of this is pure rhetoric designed to drive emotion and bring about servitude and slavery.

The left promulgates this rhetoric because it appeases and supports their Marxist agenda. It has been said that true socialism or communism could not be achieved in America because, unlike Europe, Americans had never divided themselves based on class or economic status; in America, the divide had always been race. Americans largely desired the opportunity to become wealthy and wanted government to ensure that opportunity existed for future generations. From America's founding, personal ambition, freedom, and happiness, were the cornerstone's of our economic and political system. The left understands the greatest barriers to socialism are the U.S. Constitution and the individual desire for wealth and the American dream. To achieve their ‘utopia' in America, the left must first destroy both barriers.

The Constitution provides a legal barrier that, over the last 100 years, has been crumbling due to extremist courts and the low quality of public education. By advancing fallacies of a ‘living and breathing' document, the left has managed to manipulate the interpretation of the Constitution from a document meant to limit government power for the sake of individual rights, to a document that empowers government to grant rights, and by implication, deny rights. They have replaced the founding Fathers ‘inalienable rights,' granted to each person by God, with rights to government handouts, assistance, and tax dollars.

By making government aid a right, the left has obligated taxpayers to foot the bill. Your ‘right' to health care obligates another person to pay the bill. Taken a step further, if you have a ‘right' to healthcare, does another person have an obligation to become a doctor? Go to Medical School? Does your ‘right' to health care supersede their right to freedom? Taxes are the same way. Government taxes individual income earned through the direct exchange of time and effort, for dollars. When government forcefully confiscates those dollars it forces the individual to work for government without any compensation. Individuals who work without compensation are called slaves, right? If government provides all of this to you, and you cannot do it for yourself, are you not dependent on government? What will you give in exchange for the possibility of getting life sustaining treatment? How much freedom will you surrender?


President Obama advocating for higher taxes on the richest Americans is not just a political position that I strongly oppose; it is a moral and ideological difference that, at its core, speaks to what each of us value. Obama sees the confiscation and redistribution of wealth as an act of compassion. Conservatives, like myself, see taxation as a form of theft and enslavement. Where Obama views government assistance as an act of humanitarianism, Conservatives believe he is driving dependence. Where the left claims government programs have saved people from the depths of severe poverty, I see they have deprived individuals of desire and personal ambition. They enslaved the producer and taker in a life of dependence and servitude. Compassion comes from your heart, not another's wallet.


Frank is a Conservative blogger and the founder of www.iteaparty.org .


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