Rep. , D-N.Y., is fast becoming the greatest fabulist since Aesop.
Recently, Ocasio-Cortez insisted that myth since “you cant 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 “” of taxes. The top 1% of income earners pay over 40% of federal taxes, and that percentage goes up to 70% for the top 10%.
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 cant 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 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 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 and future of this unique republic.
While Ocasio-Cortez references our 250th anniversary, she ignores that it is also the 250th anniversary of Adam Smiths “The Wealth of Nations.” Smiths 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 could not be achieved without economic freedom. Smiths economic theory was the perfect companion for their political theory.
The combination of American democratic theories and free-market theories produced the worlds 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, who spread . 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 . 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 and current rates, Morris would be a billionaire today.
The Founders believed in unleashing everyones ability to become a Morris. They fought against the taking or occupation of 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 Lockes “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 put it, the “warmth of collectivism.”
George Mason relied on Locke for his draft of the 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 chang
