The Discerning Texan

Bill Whittle has so many brilliant essays that to call this one his "best ever" might be a stretch. But with that said, this one certainly resonates with me in today's atmosphere of Marxist hate speech: This essay may be one of the more effective demolitions of the cancer of class warfare that I have seen in a long time. Class warfare is the very essence of exploitation and is the very antithesis of the Tenth Commandment.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's (goods, house or fields, nor his male or female slaves, nor his ox or ass, or anything that belongs to him).

As always, in destroying the Left's strawmen, Whittle is a Ninja among novices:

The Washington Post ran a column a few days ago, in which a Mr. Joel Berg applauds the Obama Administration for reducing the amount of charitable deduction that The Rich are allowed to take when they write a check to charity.

Mr. Berg – who runs a charitable foundation that feeds the poor — explains things for us thusly:

…It is wrong to give them [the very rich] unilateral power to decide whether their taxpayer-subsidized donations should go to, say, well-heeled operas or lavish care of pets rather than to organizations that meet more pressing communal needs.”

Mr. Berg lists two specific ways in which The Rich have been Letting Down the Team – again.

First, [he writes] such tax deductions are a highly inefficient way to fund social programs.”

Got that? He continues:

Second, voluntary private charity is a less equitable way to solve community problems.

See the problem here?

When the wealthiest Americans donate to charities, [writes Berg] they are most likely to give to universities, hospitals and cultural institutions from which they and their families may benefit.

The filthy swine!

The answer is simple. Don’t let The Rich have a big deduction on charitable giving, since they will donate to stupid things like the Arts or medical centers, instead of those charities doing important things – like Mr. Berg’s.

No sir! The answer is clear: simply tax them more.

Combined with other progressive Obama tax proposals, that change would not only start to redress the inequality gap that has engulfed America in recent decades but would also help to pay for many effective domestic programs…

… Which Mr. Berg then helpfully goes on to list.

Well, I read this article in the Washington Post, and I thought: there you have it. The top ten percent, that pays sixty percent of the total income tax and which allows the bottom half – HALF! – to pay nothing… Those horrible, greedy bastards are not using their free-will generosity as “efficiently” as the government can, so let’s just take more of their money and call it square.

So let me now send a personal message to The Rich in America…

As an American and a patriot, I implore you – I go to my knees and beg you – LEAVE NOW.

Leave. Just go away. Retire to the Cayman Islands or Bermuda or wherever, but do it now, please, while you still have some love for this country. Close your companies, fire your employees, shutter your factories and offices, sell your property, and take all of that somewhere else… better yet: somewhere scenic but poverty-stricken. Somewhere that could use some wealth creation. Somewhere that people simply are grateful to have a job in the first place. Somewhere where you will be appreciated.

You are not welcome in America any more. Take your wealth and prosperity and inventiveness and hard work and vision and insight and bold risk-taking and joy in seeing growth and wealth creation and just go away – right now, before it’s too late. Because if you stay, Joel Berg and Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd will continue to come after you for more and more and more and they will not ever stop – not ever – until you are forced to flee. And when that day comes, you will go with not with fond remembrances and a desire to return home, but rather a black heart and hard and bitter memories.

So on behalf of those few of us who still believe in the Land of Opportunity, I beg you and implore you, in the name of our common patriot ancestors who worked so hard and sacrificed so much so that we could become so spoiled and ungrateful: take your 60% of the total income taxes and just go away.

Because if you do, then there will no longer be an Enemy for the Left to stick it to. Then, perhaps, the half of the country that pays no income tax might have to put some skin in the game. Then, perhaps, with most of the wealth generation gone we will turn to our community organizers to provide the wealth creation, and the tax dollars, and the innovation. When you have gone the President of the United States, supported by an army of little acorns like Joel Berg, will have to start calling for the rest of us to be taxed more to address the inequality gap.

[... here Whittle goes into a wonderful story of his own meager beginnings, and how his drive and initiative--and some caring friends--led to the success he enjoys today. He finishes with a flourish]

.... So to The Vilified Rich, I beg you now: do for the rest of the country what my friend did for me… do for us what we are incapable of doing for ourselves. Break us of this addiction to the generosity of others. Just go away for a while, voluntarily, and leave the rest of us to look around and wonder where all the money and the jobs went. It will be painful, and it will be bitter, and our rage will be a terrible thing to see. But then, either we will get better, or we won’t. All will depend on whether or not we still feel the shame, and find the courage, to recover for ourselves the mastery over our own lives that once existed for all Americans, before you few despicable rich people came and started paying for more than half of everything. Which, as is obvious now, was not nearly enough.

If we can break this fever, then you can come back with your jobs and your capital and your vision and your wealth, which was generated by producing something large numbers of people found worth paying for. But go now, while you still love America enough to want to come back some day. Because if you don’t shut this thing down, and soon, the Bergs and Obamas will take and take and take from you until you never want to see this Godforsaken land again.

Now that is what I call an argument. Read the whole thing.

Whittle should run for office. Seriously. I think he could win.