By Lloyd “Sticks” Burt. Through our childhood we have been told that Robin Hood “Stole from the rich to give to the poor”. The actual facts are just the opposite. He stole from an over reaching government to return tax money to its rightful owners…the people. To make sense of the popular notion of Robin Hood one must change one’s view of the concept of ownership. Saying that Robin Hood was stealing from the rich assumes the rich owned the property to start with, when in fact he was only doing “theft recovery!!”
We have entered an era where the citizens of the United States think in terms of “we”. We are the richest nation on earth. We have to take care of the poor, etc. This is a change in the mindset of the nation. This nation has always celebrated the rugged individualist. Daniel Boone walking into the woods with a rifle and an ax to carve out a life for his family.
The concept of charity in ages past was kept at a local level. Churches and mutual aid societies flourished. For citizens of the United States, distrust of government was in their DNA. It was these traits that made us the most prosperous group of individuals the world has ever seen. I make this distinction because for the nation to be “rich,” the assumption must be made that the government owns everything, and the people are only permitted to keep what the government deems they need.
We continually hear from the Progressive left statements such as “Why should any person make 100 times what the janitor makes” or “No man needs 100 billion dollars”. Really? What business is it for anyone to decide how much is enough? The United States, unlike any other nation in the history of man, is not a piece of real estate. It is an ideal. The President, elected officials, or members of the military do not swear an oath to the nation. They swear an oath to uphold a document, the Constitution. Conceivably one could take that document and carve out a square anywhere on the planet and create the same political and economic miracle created on the North American Continent.
It is time to find those men and women who will begin to place the genie back in the bottle. We need to find Robin Hoods and Maid Marion’s to in government and bring taxation back to a “fee for service system.” The users of a government service should be the one’s who pay for that service. And for those who bring up the issue of fire and police, I say both should be paid through real estate taxes because it is property owners that benefit the most from these services.
At the educational level we need to find teachers that will once again teach that the United States is not a “we” society but a “me” society. In recent years there has been an effort to shame anyone that admits that they look out for themselves and their family’s interests first as greedy or evil. In fact, the opposite is true. All benefit from individuals interacting with other individuals in honest trade. Only criminals become rich at the expense of another person’s welfare.
Bill Gates became wealthy by creating a tool that was used in turn other people to become wealthy. Why does the society at large think it has a claim on his creation? Throughout history the oligarchs we have demonized have, through the use of their inventions, allowed other individuals to create great wealth. Had Henry Ford not revolutionized mass production of automobiles there would be no millionaire car dealership owners.
It is time to remind everyone about the true nature of Robin Hood. Bernie Sanders and his ilk are not Robin Hood. They are in fact King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham… stealing from the citizens to create for themselves a life of luxury without the necessity of creating value. That is the mantra of the socialist and every socialist society. It always ends up the same way. Poor citizens and wealthy government employees and officials.