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.“
WHICH one is more dangerous.. the barmaid turned Elite Global Economist in just a few short years from not knowing the 3 Branches of Govt. now trying to influence macro & micro economics – or – the people on Instagram who rapturously listen to her and feel she should be President…………………………………………………
RealRawNews
@RealRawNews1
We are hearing through sources that Hussein Obama, aka Barry Soetoro, asked Candadian Prime Minister Mark Carney for political asylum and a promise that Canada would never extradite him to the United States.
More than a little ironic that you cite Real Raw News on a post about fairy tales.
Yet, we should blindly trust any ‘anonymous source close to the matter’ on any scenario you support, like the ‘downfall of the Trump Administration’ or ‘leaked messages from SoW Hegseth’, right?
Get the feds out of social welfare. If states want it they can fund it.
Private big money is in emerging markets. The employees are foreign. The junk made is sold domestic. Tariffs were a good idea.
International trade has a problem and debt purchase by foreign governments is a problem. Mamdani really can’t tax a foreign entity. He hasn’t laws regarding foreign purchase. Citadel will run him down.
Bezos did offer domestic jobs. What’s the beef.
I wonder if AOC will accuse Oprah of not earning her billions?
Alexandria Occasional Cortex
Sanders is an evil Stalinist. AOC is a dangerous ignoramus.
The American Founders provided freedom.
That is all that good people ever need.
Compassion and charity are good…and voluntary.
The most disturbing and dangerous element in AOC’s comments resides in their acceptance by millions of ignorant, uneducated people who don’t care about truth, facts or reality. Her acolytes and apologists actually choose to believe the unbelievable, vote on the basis of those beliefs, and work to convince anyone who will listen that they represent the way to social justice, fairness and societal bliss. They vote. Their friends and associates vote. Yet we won’t take the time to go to the polls.
AOC and the communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, Democrats, RINOs, AINOs) are direct and mortal enemies of the American thesis of freedom and self-reliance, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, actual Americans, and America.
The entire communist American welfare state is antithetical and unconstitutional and must be definitively disarticulated with extreme prejudice.
Alhysteria O’crazio Corkheads
Aesop didn’t make up hia Fables. He jusr collected the lot.
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.
The particular curse of conservatives in 21st Century America is that we lack worthy opponents. We have worthy allies but worthy opponents are just as valuable, if not more so. The “not particularly interesting” views of AOC and Sanders are mirrored by the Leftists that troll this blog. Rarely does one encounter an interesting argument from them. For the most part they spew the same tired old leftism based on lies and ignorance. I’m still waiting for one to comment in good faith. The closest I’ve seen is Concerned Citizen who appears to be moderately liberal and generally is rational and restrained. All the others, not so much.
Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the rabid leftist trolls in reaction to this comment.
The Democrats be like:
OldManFromKS,
I think it is a result, i.e. worthy opponents, is their arguments lack any upstanding to logic, reason, common sense and in many cases in accordance with the law. All they have is lies, spin, circular logic or no logic at all and of course, lame insults.
That is why they are not worth reading or responding too. Listen to a fool once, then never listen again.
“Happiness” may be homage to Jeremy Bentham as- Man has two masters, one being pleasure and the other pain. Bentham also noted the 80/20 percent principle later becoming Pareto’s Principle. Pareto was a mathematician.
Pleasure is good, happiness. The quest is established as good, goodness. There are laws that fence happiness.
Cortez believes her delusions. Her quest is without fences. She’s a rotten beam in the roof of a building. Too many rotten beams causes roof collapse. The roof being government.
Common sense
—–
—– Rotten beams
—–
___
___ Solid people below
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Collapse
Lovely weather, Carpe diem…
^^^ repair your roof
Hedge funds are in another world. Really wealthy people have been investing the same money and reinvesting it over many generations.
Punish them. /s
Why punish them
?
Other people investing is what improves YOUR standard of living.
Leftists like AOC despise the founding fathers as “racists,” etc., but now she is praising them as Antifa types? I still remember all the wrecked statues. False praise is a tactic employed by people who feel they’re on the defensive. She’s deliberately twisting the truth because she can’t handle the truth.
If the left ever actually gets the power they want, Jefferson, Madison, and the Constitution will all be erased as “artifacts of racism.” Let’s hope AOC and Spanberger stay on the defensive.
Dear Mr. Turley, the Left, as shown here by the many posting of “X” take themselves way too seriously. Any criticism of the ridiculous AOC and they fall apart like a $2.00 suit. Keep it up “Illegitimate”, you have made my day. Thank you!!!
Fall apart? More like posting better arguments supporting AOC ‘s position. Nobody has actually refuted “x”.
No need to refute x. No need to respond to x. x is nothing more than an attempt to deflect, distract, make disingenuous arguments.
“X” has more consistency in its arguments than the majority here. The inability to refute “x” means he/she has a stronger argument.
Long may X rule here.
That’s a joke, right?
No, the truth. Can’t handle the truth eh?
The truth? 🤣😂😆😆
X, stop posting as anon. desperate.
Now we got X posting as Anon and supportive of X? AOC ‘s position? What IS her position? “better arguments supporting AOC ‘s position” Why can’t the dummy AOC make her own points? Everyone knows X is an idiot.
It’s not like any of them has a life.
AOC is a pig…she will always be one of the elite in her plan…socialism/communism only works to take from the mass of people to make them even even if some work harder then others they get the same…in her ideal the ruling class will make the rules and always have the riches…Pied Piper
I believe that AOC’s ego has vaunted to the point where she believes her word alone can change history. This is dangerous.
Ego? Good for her. Betcha you have a personal problem with Hispanic women.
^ Typical leftist, stupidly playing the race card ^
Typical MAGA anon stupidly playing the race card.
^ Typical leftist lying moron, stupidly and falsely saying MAGA plays the race card ^
Why don’t we call these people what they are?
Communist thugs.
First you have to prove they’re communists.
There has never been a socialist who has not believed that they are motivated by altruism even if requires enforcement at the barrel of a gun. Marx believed that he was altruistic. Fidel Castro believed that he was altruistic. Che Guevara believed that he was altruist and if you disagreed your death would by his hand would be justified. What has been the results in blue states other than a train to nowhere. They collect more taxes and then spend more money than they receive. Don’t worry AOC and her allies have a plan for us all. Why aren’t you excited?
What AOC always fails to consider is the private contributions of the wealthy.
Thomas Edison had an estimated net worth of $12 million at the time of his death in 1931. Adjusted for inflation, this amount is equivalent to approximately $170 million to $217 million in modern currency. Despite his success, he experienced periods of extreme financial hardship and came close to bankruptcy multiple times. By the end of the 19th century, Alexander Graham Bell was worth approximately $1 million (roughly $30 million in 2024 dollars). While he did not accumulate the extreme wealth of contemporary tycoons like Rockefeller, his early, high-stakes investment in his own invention—securing a 33% stake in the Bell Telephone Company in 1877—provided significant financial success.
Harvard is supported by 56.1 billion dollars in endowment contributed by the wealthy.
AOC would prefer that these contributions would be conscripted rather than voluntary and that she and her ilk would make the decisions as to the distribution of the funds collected.
The outcome would simply result in some pigs are more equal than other pigs she being one of the more equal pigs. The history of the more equal pigs is well documented and has resulted in the millions of deaths of those who refused to comply. No thank you AOC!
TiT,
Well said.
Better to be in command of ones own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness than leaving it to others.
The delusion continues. This guys thinks “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.. is sacrosanct, inviolable
You do not have “command” of your life, government – federal, state and local – “command” your life. How can you not know that?
Betcha you can’t park your car, make renovations to your home, who you marry, or even decide when to end your life without governmental intrusion.
Good points. Try and run business without the requisite license(s). Only gov. can give them, and penalize those without. Drive a car without gov. permission too..
I think you miss the point. Commanding your own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is the goal freedom loving Americans strive for. Socialism strives to put your fate and pretty much everything else in the hands of “the people” (aka government). Which do you think is more likely to create happy people?
Miss the point? Anon 11:39 and 12:25 stated absolute truths… federal, state and local have absolute control over your existence.
^A very shallow response. WHO do you think the government is actually protecting, by:
(1) Making sure a person knows how to drive, and has no outstanding warrants or arrests, before granting a license?
(2) Making sure that home improvements are done correctly, so as to protect not only homeowners, but neighboring properties, from home explosions, fires, or collapse?
(3) Making sure that a person is not evading immigration law or identity theft by marrying someone?
(4) Making sure that greedy physicians are not making money by talking you into euthanasia or transgendering?
(5) Making sure that your education is neutral in basic tenets and not influenced by political ideology?
(6) Making sure that persons who say they are qualified in certain professions are actually qualified?
(7) Making sure that your share of taxes for road, infrastructure, and clean water is actually premised on how much your property is worth (which can be appealed)?
Surely you are kidding. Are you george in disguise?