Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is fast becoming the greatest fabulist since Aesop.
Recently, Ocasio-Cortez insisted that true billionaires are a capitalist myth since “you can’t earn a billion dollars.” However, her greatest work of fiction may be her insistence that the Framers fought against billionaires and would have joined her and other socialists in seeking to eradicate them today.
Bertrand Russell once noted that “there is something feeble and a little contemptible” about those “who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.”
The American left has long peddled such “comfortable myths” as the wealthy “not paying their fair share” of taxes. (The top one percent of income earners pay over 40% of federal taxes, and that percentage goes up to 70% for the top ten percent).
However, Ocasio-Cortez has become a liberal Homer for her reputation for spinning collectivist tales. What is impressive is her myth-within-a-myth signature style: “You can’t earn that, right? And so you have to create a myth… you have to create a myth of earning it.”
In a discussion at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Ocasio-Cortez gave her revisionist account of the Founders as, surprise, budding anti-capitalists:
“I want to talk about how this is in the heritage of our country, because America was founded… you look at Thomas Jefferson writing to Madison in revolt of British aristocracy. The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. And we are declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and power and the state that the voices of everyday people did not exist.”
In my recent book, “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss the economic philosophy of the Founders in exploring the history and future of this unique Republic.
While Ocasio-Cortez references our 250th anniversary, she ignores that it is also the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Smith’s free-market theory was an instant hit with the founding generation. These men had just created the first major Enlightenment Revolution based on a belief in natural rights that came from God, not governments.
Yet, they knew that true individual liberty could not be achieved without economic freedom. Smith’s economic theory was the perfect companion for their political theory.
The combination of American democratic theories and free market theories produced the world’s most successful and oldest democracy in history. In Rage and the Republic, I discuss the threats to this Republic, including from figures like Ocasio-Cortez, in spreading socialist myths. The book calls for a recommitment to what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy.”
That is why this particular myth told by Ocasio-Cortez was so jarring. The Founders were great believers in capitalism and the free market. They were not fighting “the billionaires of their time” over their wealth. Many of the Founders were themselves quite wealthy, including banker Robert Morris Jr., who was known as the “Financier of the Revolution.”
Adjusting for inflation and current rates, Morris would be a billionaire today.
The Founders believed in unleashing everyone’s ability to become a Morris. They fought against the taking or occupation of property by the government. At the very top of their stated purpose for the American Revolution was “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The phrase was virtually ripped from the page of John Locke’s “life, liberty, and property.” Locke believed that there was a natural right to property created by what God left “in common” for humanity. Preceding any government, it was a right that belonged to human beings by divine grant. Hardly a roaring endorsement of socialist ideals or, as Zohran Mamdani put it, the “warmth of collectivism.”
George Mason relied on Locke for his draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which Jefferson relied on heavily. Mason wrote of “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
Of course, the property reference was changed to happiness in the Declaration, which reflected the more transcendent values of these Enlightenment devotees.
While reduced to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” the original language appeared in the Fifth Amendment and, later in the Fourteenth Amendment, protecting citizens from being “deprived of life, liberty, or property.”
In his 1792 essay “Property,” James Madison echoed Lockean values in declaring that good government “secures to every man whatever is his own.”
Other early figures, like Chief Justice John Marshall, wrote, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”
The new myth-making on the left is meant to revive what I previously described as “economic factionalism,” seeking political power with this type of “eat-the-rich” rhetoric. It is working (as it has in history). In California, many are pushing a “billionaire’s tax,” while far-left figures like Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are pushing for a federal variation.
In states from Washington state to Virginia, Democrats are virtually chasing wealthy taxpayers out of blue states with planned millionaire taxes.
To achieve such radical change, you must first destroy the values upon which this Republic was born, convincing people that their fundamental ties to capitalism are as ephemeral as true billionaires.
The greatest irony is that Ocasio-Cortez personifies what the Founders truly wanted to combat. They feared mobocracy and the tyranny of the majority, the arbitrary power that can come from majoritarian abuse.
Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and others are truly not new or particularly interesting additions to the political dialogue. They are the same voices of democratic despotism that Madison and others sought to quell.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.“
We need a tax uniformity amendment (TUA). Some state constitutions have this, which governs state taxes. We need one at the federal level to govern federal taxes. Ideally it should be applicable even to states that don’t have one in their own state constitutions.
The TUA should say that taxes must be applied uniformly upon same class of subjects. This means the effective tax rate on a thing cannot depend on the quantity of the thing being taxed. This would essentially require a flat tax with no deductions.
Not only is that fairest and simplest, it would (a) prevent sophisticated tax strategy based on deductions, and (b) generate substantial jobs and economic growth.
AOC is largely a fraud. But she does have a point. Adam Smith has a point which is irrefutable as to the essence of meritorious earnings being the manifestation of the individual. All the ‘rights of man’ flow from that. AOC’s point is about the nature of monopoly finance capital. That is an economic phenomenon which this country’s founder could not have anticipated. The effect makes redundant/unnecessary an ever larger portion of the working class, such that homelessness and poverty are endemic and growing. Efficiency in production necessarily results in costs which are externalized to the public and paid for in blood and tears by the individuals whose ‘rights of man’ are but a cruel joke. Look at the Iranians paying today for the military-industrial complex’s need for relevance. Turley is blinded by the fog of ideology just as AOC is blinded by the fog of ideology. She is a creation of Democrat corporatists who repurpose mass discontent into the means of geopolitical dominance. It takes a Hillary to pillage a village. On Main Street, the ideology of meritorious earnings has to prevail – lest the whole country go the way of Democrat municipal corruption en masse. The future is intractable conflict. Ideology about it comes second and is a fool’s errand.
Monopolies are bad because they distort the free market, with its price signal system. There needs to be free and fair competition. That is the essence of the free market. And that’s why there are antitrust laws. People like AOC point to monopolies as a way to attack the free market, which is perverse.
You’re against monopolies. You just pointed out why they are bad. AOC is making the same argument.
Antitrust laws are useless when the government is largely bought by the monopolies. Republicans are big fans of monopolies because they get tons of money from them.
There is no free market. It’s all rigged in favor of monopolies and you’re cheering them on while attacking AOC.
^ Marxist agitprop with no connection to realty. That you Mamdani? Katie Wilson? AOC? ^
OMFK
Astoundingly stupid and self-contradictory comment, but par for the course in the wonderful MAGA fantasy land.
You are correct that monopolies distort the free market, and there needs to be free and fair competition.
Then you suggest that the solution is antitrust laws, which by definition cannot be a feature of “free markets”. Any market subject to regulatory laws cannot possibly be “free”.
Then you make the utterly absurd claim that AOC is perversely using monopolies to attack the free market, which is exactly what you are doing when you decry monopolies as a distortion of the free market.
Dig deeper and you’ll find the common man’s pension funds invested in and by the “monopolistic financiers” as you say, hornbuckle.
You can go online or go into a hardware store and hold in your hand what Johnathan is discussing. Ames shovels and hand tools. Before the American Revolution Britain outlawed making iron in the colonies to give England a monopoly to make colonists buy English. John Ames of Bridgewater, Mass. responded by making good quality steel shovels in Bridgewater. Later he made long guns for the soldiers of the Continental Army in the war. Today the Ames tool company still supplies good quality tools to us. On the other hand, the U.K. is struggling to keep alive its last and unprofitable steel mill, largely controlled by a Chinese company. If the blast furnace goes down, so does the refractory brick lining the furnace. So the discussion is about nationalizing the company and the industry. So much for AOC’s just-so tale.
One could argue this actually supports AOC’s point about British “billionaires” (the Crown and mercantilist elites) using the state to crush competition. The Founders weren’t just fighting for “free markets”; they were fighting for the right of the people to be self-sufficient and not beholden to an extractive, distant elite.
The Ames Company itself is no longer a small family forge; it is a multinational corporation owned by the Griffon Corporation. The transformation from a revolutionary blacksmith into a global subsidiary is exactly the type of “consolidation of power” that AOC’s supporters argue requires new forms of regulation.
The real debate is whether we want an economy like 1774, where small-scale entrepreneurs can flourish by breaking monopolies, or whether we have reached a stage where global monopolies are so powerful that only a “sovereign” (the state) can protect a nation’s industrial base.
😂 today those good quality steel shovels are made in China as is everything else. Except they aren’t steel and of very poor quality. Then there’s craft beer. Yep, crafty and moldy tasting.
Fun fact, Adam Smith supported progressive taxation, stating: “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
Seems Adams was the AOC of his era. Or the socialist of his time.
One sentence. From a section on toll roads. Out of 900 pages. And that’s your case that Adam Smith was basically AOC. That’s impressively bad.
OLLY,
Do not engage with the slow and dumb one. Best to just ignore and scroll past. You are just arguing with a AI bot anyways.
Upstate I’m no ai bot. You’re just unable to argue on the facts.
I couldn’t just let his “AI” analysis lay there unchallenged. He doesn’t understand or more importantly conveniently ignored what the framer’s opposition to mercantilism was about. Smith wasn’t warning about “billionaires”. He was warning about what happens when government becomes the tool of the wealthy. His remedy was less government power, not more. More government power is exactly what mercantilism ran on. AOC has correctly identified the Smithian disease and then prescribed more of the pathogen as the cure.
Olly,
If you have “less government” but billionaires are powerful enough to write their own laws (regulatory capture), you haven’t cured the disease; you’ve just removed the only doctor in the room. AOC’s supporters argue that the “pathogen” isn’t “the government” in the abstract—it’s unregulated private power that uses the government as its personal servant.
AOC’s “Socialist” policies (taxing billionaires to fund healthcare or education) are the opposite of mercantilist protectionism. She isn’t asking the state to protect a specific industry (like the East India Company); she is asking the state to reclaim resources from the top to invest in “the commons.”
In 2026, the “common man” is often more threatened by a lack of healthcare, a crumbling infrastructure, or a monopoly in the tech or food industry than he is by “government power.” AOC argues that the “Smithian remedy” of the 1700s cannot solve the problems of 2026 because the threat to liberty has shifted from the Crown to the Boardroom.
Shrinking government so it’s “less useful” to the wealthy is a farce. Shrinking government makes it more subservient to the ultra wealthy. Meaning exactly what the founders were against. We are just substituting royal nobility class with corporate monopoly class.
Olly, Smith didn’t just mention tolls; he spent hundreds of pages warning that businessmen would use their wealth to subvert the state.
Smith famously wrote that people of the same trade “seldom meet together… but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Sounds a lot like something AOC would say.
This is the core of AOC’s “myth” argument: that billionaires don’t always “earn” wealth through pure merit, but through a system they’ve designed to exclude competition and lower wages—what Smith called “the clamour and sophistry” of merchants seeking a monopoly.
If you read the full 900 pages, Smith argues that the wealth of a nation is measured by the well-being of its laborers, not its hoard of gold or its few billionaires.
Smith would likely be horrified by a “gig economy” where labor has no bargaining power. He believed that when the law tries to settle disputes between masters and workers, it should listen to the workers, because “when the regulation… is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable.”
The “900 pages” also include Smith’s attack on the East India Company—a private entity that had the power of a state.
When AOC attacks “billionaires,” she is attacking the modern version of the East India Company—private power so large it rivals the government. The Founders (like Jefferson) hated these “monopolies of wealth” because they believed they were incompatible with a Republic of equals.
It’s not just one sentence; it’s the entire spirit of the book. Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations to attack the billionaires of his day—the mercantilist elites—who used the state to protect their wealth. If he were alive today, he would likely be writing those 900 pages about Super PACs and regulatory capture, not defending the ‘natural right’ of a few individuals to own more than the bottom 50% of the population.
It s unfortunate that so few know anything about history any longer, thanks to our corrupt and inept education system. The Founders DID embrace capitalism as the foundation of individual liberty. The issue boils down to those with motivation and those without. Anyone can succeed here, provided they have the drive to put in the effort. Our “wealth gap” is due to a motivation gap.
Turley characterizes AOC as a “fabulist,” he performs his own “myth-making” by casting the Founders as modern-day neoliberal capitalists. In reality, the Founders were Enlightenment radicals who feared that any concentrated power—be it a King’s crown or a merchant’s chest—would inevitably lead to the “tyranny” they sought to escape.
The Revolution was fought against a system where a tiny elite (the Crown and landed gentry) controlled the state’s levers of power for their own enrichment. Today’s billionaires are the tiny elite who are increasingly controlling everything. From media to buying politicians. AOC is right. Turley, as usual, deliberately mischaracterizes her position.
Thomas Jefferson famously suggested that “legislators cannot inventory too many difficulties” to the redistribution of property, proposing that “great property” should be taxed at higher rates to provide for the poor. He even advocated for an inheritance tax to prevent the rise of a permanent American aristocracy.
While Madison defended property, in Federalist No. 10 he warned specifically against “factions” caused by the “unbalanced” distribution of property. He argued that the chief business of government was to regulate these conflicting economic interests to prevent any one group from dominating the others.
And as for the tax issues, Because of capital gains treatments and loopholes, many billionaires pay a lower effective tax rate than teachers or nurses. Turley “forgot to mention it.” Also Billionaires often have little “taxable income” relative to their massive growth in net worth. Focusing only on income tax obscures the reality of how the wealthiest 0.1% accumulate untaxed power.
AOC’s assertions are not wrong. But Turley who is paid to peddle counter arguments and opinions relies and misleading claims and false narratives.
“AOC had at least $15K in student debt while pushing for loan forgiveness: filing”
https://nypost.com/2023/08/16/aoc-had-between-15k-to-50k-in-student-loan-debt-while-pushing-for-mass-forgiveness/
“Ocasio-Cortez, who graduated from Boston University in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in international relations and economics, earned at least $174,000 in salary before taxes last year.
“The latest disclosure, filed on Sunday, shows AOC held between $15,001 and $50,000 in debt in 2022.
“NK1947
16 August, 2023
“$174,000 a year and couldn’t pay off loans over the past 12 years?? Sorry but politicians should NOT be allowed to benefit from loan forgiveness or allowed to plead their own personal cases!”
“Jenny Lake
16 August, 2023
“No need to be sorry!! You are 100% right. And AOC should be ashamed for being so self- serving considering her position.”
“Isabel
16 August, 2023
“AOC is a perfect example of the belief that if you have no talent, are not smart, but want to make a lot of money doing nothing — go into politics and do whatever those controlling your party tell you to do.”
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other progressives have made student loans a top priority, aiming to eliminate student debt entirely and make higher education free for all. Ocasio-Cortez reported owing between $15,001 and $50,000 in student loan debt in her most recent financial disclosure. Two of her closest allies in the House, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), also are paying back student loans.
Democrats in Congress have far more student debt than Republicans,”
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/04/members-of-congress-owe-millions-in-student-loans/
George, who is paying YOU “to peddle counter arguments and opinions [that] rel[y] on misleading claims and false narratives?”
x is nothing but the village idiot. x makes disingenuous arguments, defects and distractions.
It would have been nice to have Turley cite what Jefferson wrote before telling us why the Founders loved wealth. Not that the individual Founders themselves didn’t love wealth for themselves. Jefferson repeatedly warned that concentrated wealth was dangerous to republican government. He believed that large fortunes produced corruption, aristocracy, and political domination, and he feared that the United States could reproduce the inequalities of Europe.
“I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.”
— Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1816
“The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”
— Letter to George Logan, 1816
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.”
— Letter to George Logan, 1816
“An aristocracy of wealth is a dangerous institution.”
— Letter to John Adams, 1813
Jefferson believed in progressive taxation and limits on inheritance. His goal was to prevent the rise of a permanent wealthy class. Jefferson: owned hundreds of enslaved people, lived off forced labor, died deeply in debt, was part of the Virginia planter elite. He created the bailout of plantation owners in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware who were no longer able to thrive growing tobacco after ruining their fields. He ended the International Slave Trade in 1808, not as a gradual means to end slavery or out of concern for human rights as he wrote to Congress. He did it to increase the value of domestic-bred slaves who were desperately needed farther South with the demand created by the cotton gin. The demand was met by the forced breeding and rape of female slaves to produce children who were also slaves thanks to Partus Sequitur Ventrem, which to be fair preceded Jefferson though it began in the Virginia House of Burgess to which Jefferson once belonged.
You’re welcome for today’s history lesson to which many will attack me without disproving anything I’ve said.
Enigma and Mr. X continue their assault on AI in an attempt to counter facts, common sense and reality.
I provided facts, none of which you dispute.
Assault? Common sense dictates you show the facts presented are wrong. I don’t see you trying.
HullBobby,
Just ignore them.
Of course Upstatefarmer demands everyone wallow in ignorance instead of considering a different point of view because it’s uncomfortable and annoying. Truly sad.
X
Perfect summation of the MAGA cult.
Ignorance is bliss, as they say.
Yes indeed !!!
The ignorance of “alternative facts” as Kellyanne Conway famously stated.
AOC continues her role as the Court Jester of the American Left. Political freedom without economic freedom is a hollow shell.
She is, however, an excellent parody of American Education, alas, especially in the northeast and west coast.
She is that perfect example from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. “It is as a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury , signifying nothing.”
She needs to be careful, because, if her Socialist Utopia is achieved, she will be one of the first to be dumped or stood up against a wall and disposed of. Even serious Socialists would eventually find her tedious and of no use.
Court jester? Guess what, she’s doing a great job of it, getting young people to vote Democrat while you attack and insult her and the dems. She achieves, while you and your ilk wallow in self pity and hate. As for tedious…
AOC probably hasn’t a clue who are most are the people Prof. Turley mentioned in his article. If you haven’t read “Rage and the Republic,” I suggest you do. Perhaps then you will know how perilously close the edge of the abyss we are and how dangerous the Jacobins of the Dem party are to this country.
She got so man young people to vote Democrat that they lost the WH, lost the Senate and lost the House, and had a Republican get more of the popular vote for the first time in ages. But hey, she is really moving those numbers.
Hullbobby, of course your using past tense. Now Trump is the most unpopular president in history. His poll numbers are in the trash. He can’t negotiate and republicans are presiding over massive amounts of debt and spending. Ball room costing taxpayers $1 billion now? I thought republicans were all about fiscal responsibility. They are not doing well at all.
your twisting of facts is so georgie.
The requested ball room funding was an UPGRADE for increased security provisions following attempted assassination. And if you are gauging Trump’s popularity on Left-driven polling, we have a few bridges-to-nowhere to sell you
A great job at what? Proving how uninformed, misinformed Democrats really are? Continuing to misinform them with all these “myths?” This would be the same achiever who fights against oligarchs while flying on a private jet or first class.
So? How is occasional travel in first class an issue? Private jet travel as a necessity to meet campaign rally schedules is logistics not luxury.
If you had the opportunity to fly 1st class would you take it? Would that make you a hypocrite?
I guess Boston University does not teach its econ majors the fundamental difference between wealth by physical force (aristocrats), aka political power, and wealth by production and trade (the American businessman), aka economic power.
Contrary to AOC’s wishes, the Founders grasped that crucial distinction. That is why they created a *limited* government, and openly rejected the aristocratic notion of landed titles.
The founders? Oh no, not another enlightened fool using the founders as a talking point…. created a limited government? What does that even mean? It may have escaped your perusal, that the federal government in omnipotent… its controls your entire livelihood. That’s’ not limited government. That’s complete control over you .
Interesting timing. This Law and Liberty piece on Argentina dropped today and fits this Turley discussion perfectly.
Alberdi didn’t build Argentina’s constitution around wealth creation. He built it around the protection of natural rights as the precondition for everything else:
“The Constitution that does not give a man the right to dispose of what is his own, is not a Constitution; it is a system of organized confiscation.”
When Argentina honored that framework they became one of the ten wealthiest nations on earth. When they abandoned it for redistribution and the absorbing state, generational decline followed.
The Founders understood the same thing. Secure the rights. The wealth follows. It’s not complicated. It’s just inconvenient for people who want to use government as a tool for outcomes rather than a guardian of liberty.
https://lawliberty.org/adam-smiths-legacy-in-alberdis-argentina/
WTF does that have to do with AOC?
Thanks for that Olly. You might find interesting the WSJ’s essay today on Swedens’s economic resurgence as it moves away from the model with which Ms. AOC et al are enamored, mainly the welfare state. Recall, they remained open and did not participate in the insane Covid lockdowns that the rest of Europe and America will be paying for over decades to come. Of course, that is assuming Western Civilization survives.
Thanks Mary. Sweden is a case study nobody on the left wants to touch anymore. It used to be their flagship. “Look at Sweden” was practically a bumper sticker. Then Sweden looked at Sweden and started dismantling it. School vouchers, privatization, tax cuts, pension reform. The model they were selling got quietly shelved by the people actually living under it. And yes, the Covid call was remarkable in hindsight. No hysteria, no lockdowns, and they’re still standing while everyone else is still calculating the damage.
And they may yet dodge the mass migration bullet that has infected a lot of Western Europe. They’ve made harder turns on immigration policy than most are willing to admit is even necessary. Whether it’s too late or just in time is the real question. The next decade tells that story. Send the WSJ link if you get a chance.
“It’s just inconvenient for people who want to use government as a tool for outcomes rather than a guardian of liberty.”
Great sentence Olly. I will have to try to keep that in my grey matter.
OLLY,
Thank you for bringing that to our attention. How a country can succeed when they secure the rights and liberty of the people.
Thank you both. And isn’t that always the case? Secure the rights, protect the liberty, get out of the way. It really is that simple. The formula hasn’t changed in 250 years and the proof is everywhere.
The more complicated the explanation, the more steps, the more academic scaffolding required, the more likely it’s not actually about securing rights at all. Complexity is the refuge of people who don’t like the simple answer.
Olly,
If a constitution protects “property” in a way that prevents the majority from ever acquiring it, it ceases to be a “liberty-enhancing” system and becomes the very “British aristocracy” model AOC claims the Founders opposed.
The extreme inequality of Alberdi’s “Golden Age” is precisely what created the vacuum for the populist and redistributionist movements (like Peronism) that later crippled the country.
In The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote: “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
The Founders didn’t just want wealth to “follow”; they wanted a stable republic. They knew that if wealth became too concentrated, the “factions” (the poor vs. the rich) would eventually destroy the Republic—which is exactly what happened in Argentina’s later years.
AOC is correct in her general assertion.
“If a constitution protects “property” in a way that prevents the majority from ever acquiring it . . .”
Why do socialists evade their own history: Let’s give government grocery stores a chance. And then completely ignore the history of capitalism:
It is American capitalism, with its cornerstone of the right to property, that created the unprecedented phenomenon of middle-class home ownership.
The statistics about the percentage of taxes paid by top 1 percent or top 10 percent are interesting and perhaps compelling. They would be entitled to more weight, however, if accompanied by a statement of what percentage of total income these taxpayers earn.
Why? Do you ask the same of the 40% of US households that pay NO income tax? Of course you don’t as that would expose your true motives.
The Founders didn’t oppose wealth. They opposed tyranny. They didn’t support capitalism. They supported liberty.
Every institution they built, every check they designed, every right they enumerated had one purpose: prevent the infringement of natural rights by any means, from any source.
Wealth used to corrupt government or trample others? Tyranny. Government confiscating legitimately earned property? Also tyranny.
Jefferson warned about an “aristocracy of wealth” when it becomes dangerous to society. Adams said concentrated economic power fused with political power leads to oligarchy. But neither advocated redistribution. Neither supported confiscation. They supported a system where rights are secured against all forms of tyranny, public or private, democratic or plutocratic.
The question isn’t “how much wealth is too much.” It’s “are rights being secured or violated?” That’s the only test that mattered to them, and it’s the only test that should matter to us.
AOC wants government power to punish success. Her critics pretend corrupt wealth-power fusion isn’t a threat. The Founders rejected both. They built a republic to protect natural rights, not to pick winners in economic arguments. If your position can’t answer “how does this secure rights rather than infringe them,” you’re making a case they would have rejected.
AOC wants government power to punish success. Are those her words, or your? You’re lying.
AOC is a demonstrated idiot, Dad. Do you see what this camping out in the basement, reading the WaPoo, NYT and The Hill has done to you? The kids are hungry, Dad. Please take a shower and look for a job
The entire Dem party is based on fiction but with the help of the media, they make it work. AOC spinning a tale is not even news. . .
Fiction? What fiction is that then?
See Dad? You can no longer even tell fact from fiction! Now wonder you refuse to pay the the utility bills based upon ‘faulty meters’.
Please come up from the basement and go get a job, Dad.
Let’s face reality, AOC and anyone that votes for her are morons.
Why are they morons? You voted for Trump.
You voted for Harris and Walz, Dad! Remember yelling at your sister and telling her she needed to vote for them as well because they were the smartest people on earth?
Steve Witherspoon,
As is evident by the mass exodus of people with means to leave these failed Blue states and cities.
AOC and Bernie and their ilk are desperate to create a national billionaires tax as well as other high tax schemes because they need to stop the “Wealth Flight” out of blue cities and states. The future of congressional reapportionment is trending strongly against Democrats due to a few factors but high taxes is a big part of it.
When someone retires after saving and saving for decades and finds they “suddenly” have a decent portfolio of investments, possibly a pension and a hug profit from downsizing their primary residence they certainly don’t want to be giving the state and/or city that actually hates them 5, 6 as much as 10 percent of their yearly income. They then decide that housing is cheaper in the red state, crime is lower in the red state, the weather is better in the red state (except for CA) and the politics aligns with them better in the red state.
After grand ma and grandpa move to the red state their children start visiting them in the red state and they discover that it is actually run better, has better infrastructure and isn’t some dogpatch of a lifestyle. Then the children move there as well and lo and behold another entire family of productive people has moved.
Stupid comment.
You say that to everyone, Dad. That is why your family is isolated. Please come up from the basement and go look for a job today…
Well, I saw that in Eagle County Colorado (particularly Beaver Creek and Vail) where the parents retired to their vacation homes after successful careers and the kids (who had grown up skiing there) followed their parents or grands after college along with other youngsters who were attracted by the lifestyle. But the kids began voting blue and now the county, like Front Range and Summit and Pitkin counties, has been californicated. This editorial from the Vail Daily nails why for the first time in memory (if ever) there is outward migration from the Centennial state.
https://www.vaildaily.com/news/opinion-lewis-colorados-tipping-point/
HullBobby,
That is actually a very good point about the wealth leaving Blue States for Red ones. Leftist Democrat policies are and have been failures. And that is evident by the mass exodus of people with the means to do so.
The utopia Democrats envisioned required massive social programs that they poorly ran (massive fraud too). It is clear people got fed up with high taxes and all the other failed Democrat policies and left.
They also, as AOC has demonstrated, they lack not only historical knowledge as the good professor points out, but economic as well. They just keep pushing these myths their voters just gobble up blindly.
Yesterday, I found there is a new feature in the WordPress site administration page, under the Media setting that allows one to generate images using AI. Up until now I avoided AI but I could not resist trying out the functionality, since I have no drawing ability whatever. It was truly astounding at how little effort could be expended to make something worthwhile.
I decided to make permutations of Da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine” as a base then merged it with other artistic styles and made adjustments as I went. I think we’d be better off not listening to fools and instead make use of things that invoke our own creativity and thinking.
Lady with an Ermine merged with a Madonna and Child motif with a bit of art nouveau.
This one is Lady with an Ermine in the style of Alphonse Mucha having a stained glass motif
A tribute to Roy Lichtenstein
Darren, its fing crap.
Agree with you on this one, Dad.
I’ve been writing lately on the false choice of Socialism vs Capitalism as if the third option of biblical economics did not exist. AOC’s conclusions are wrong, as usual, but you’ll see a grain of truth in her premise if you research the enclosure movement in England and how the Founders restored the “commons” in the American colonies. It’s always bothered me that we conservatives blindly rally to the defense of the obscenely rich elites whose only reason for wealth is inheritance protected by lobbyist driven legislation. God’s plan featured regular resets and an abhorrence of hoarding because everyone was expected to honor His ownership of everything and manage it as stewards.
As Karl Marx and Frederick Engles taught us, Socialism is not an end in itself. Socialism is a PATH to Communism.
AOC, Bernie Sanders, El-Sayed, Ilhan Omar, Elizabeth Warren, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Graham Platner goal is to replace a society based on Adam Smith’s well defined principles of Capitalism with Communism.
Ah Ms. AOC – the bartender turned Politician Grifter who once complained her salary as a Representative did not pay enough for her to live in DC and NYC simultaneously. However, she has clearly adapted to Swampy Life and has amazingly stopped complaining about cash and attends MET Gala’s etc. like all the other “little people” right? Easy to understand ENVY of those with wealth who W-O-R-K-E-D FOR IT and claim they had special privilege. But to then put a healthy dose of confiscation with that envy is where she goes too far in calling for scummy equity versus hard work equal opportunity.
AOC s a little girl, wishing to be a Queen.
And that makes you a drag queen then.
Dad, we that is a hurtful comment. Remember, we talked about this when you said the same thing to Grandpa.
Ben K, all I can say is wow. You managed to turn a critique of AOC’s moronic ideas of socialism, our Revolution, confiscatory tax schemes, class envy and her geopolitical and economic illiteracy into a claim of racism (as if anyone sees AOC and thinks Puerto Rican and not just a childish political fool), an attack on her (?) beauty and her “great success” at being a congressperson.
Nobody is jealous of AOC, we or fearful that in this Tik Tok world anyone with some influence with our young people while being a supposed socialist (maybe communist) as well as an open border, “America isn’t just the United States, it is all of the peoples of the Americas, is a danger.
Bartender to politician? Sounds like the American Dream and for that you hate her?
Becoming a politician is the American dream? Who knew?
It’s especially amazing how none of the mainstream media, especially the ultra left will fact check her on any of what she said
You’re right. The media is looking for “gotcha” moments and will eventually tire of the ranting of Cortez.
Gordy, they never fact check the liberals and they never ask the dreaded follow-up question.
Isn’t there any way to get rid of morons like this?
Gordy Thomas,
Well, it has been noted she has been the lest effective lawmaker in Congress. Her district is awash with crime and some of her constitutes have tried to call her out at her town hall meetings, which she then runs from. One would think they would get fed up with her incompetence and vote her out, but the majority will continue to vote for her despite her lack of action to represent them or do anything about the crime.
Ah, because that is their job.
Their job?
🙈🙉🙊
Why should they?