Columns

History repeated

LEN TRIA, Uncommon Sense
Published: December 2, 2012

It is becoming more and more obvious that the Republic is in dire straits and in jeopardy of being lost.

Our founders, who were in retrospect brilliant men, set-up a form of government known as a Federal Republic that was based upon a representative form of government. The representatives are democratically elected and they then assemble in Washington to ostensibly do the public's business.

They specifically did not create a democracy that requires votes by the public on issue of policy. They opposed that idea because they feared the tyranny of the majority and wanted to protect the rights of the minority.

Now along comes a man who never ran a business or even a lemonade stand and he is elected President of these United States. His view of government however, is not what the Founder's envisioned.

He talks using euphuisms for redistribution of wealth because of the gap in income/wealth between Americans. He states that there must be more fairness in opportunity. Problem is who has defined fairness and it is neither a guaranteed right from our Creator nor one from government.

His definition of fairness is to take from those who have and give it to those who have not. Remember as Marx stated: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. While he may not have been the originator of the phrase Marx certainly believed it.

Now there is a new postulate that the wealthy should be charged a wealth tax. While this is happening in foreign countries it may be difficult to institute here. Recently I watched a news program that featured a PhD, an associate professor at Columbia University; espouse the idea of a wealth tax which in effect would be a confiscation of one's property in violation of the Constitution.

I really wonder where these so called intellectuals acquire their PhD's that often appear to be of the mail order variety. No one with that much alleged intelligence could be as stupid as to believe in punishing achievers is morally and intellectually correct. What we have now encountered in the last election is the tyranny of the majority that demands the wealthy should pay more to support them.

That is done without regard to what is the rule of law but in accordance to mob rule. There is no right for a majority to advocate the punishment, which it is when you deprive people of their property, for some philosophical belief that has been shown to be a sham and never to have worked whenever it was tried.

For 75 years the Soviet Union labored under the pretense of the dictatorship of the proletariat and a classless society only to crumble and as President Reagan said be consigned to the ash heap of history.

If we, as Burke stated, "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it" are we then embarking on that pathway to doom and ruin?

Len Tria, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill and is a former Hernando County commissioner.