Classless warfare

By Dan Popp

Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. — President Barack Obama

We have to give the proverbial devil his proverbial due. Mr. Obama does tell the truth sometimes, though I hope I may be forgiven for suspecting that most of those times are accidents. The President is correct when he rejects the charge that he is engaging in class warfare.

As a matter of semantics, there are no classes in America, and never have been. The future may be a different story. As Marx' theories become policies, they tend to create three classes: a small Director class, a large class of the Destitute, and a class of unknown size who ran afoul of the first class — the Dead.

But as a matter of fact, the war being waged by Obama and his komrades is not directed against a particular social stratum. That's just the propaganda. No one would join his side of the battle if they knew the truth: This is a war against you. Yes, you, whoever you are; rich, poor, liberal or conservative. If you earn anything, if you own anything, if you wish to make your own decisions about your life, if you think you may wish to live when bureaucrats don't see the cost benefit of it, the United States government is at war with you.

Hear John Locke, the philosopher who most shaped the political views of our Founders. (All Locke quotes in this article are from his Second Treatise of Government, and emphasis is mine throughout.) He wrote:

The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.

When Locke uses the word "property," he means the individual's life, first of all; then how that person may employ the gifts God has given him (his liberty); and finally the fruits of those two, his physical goods. This view agrees with the Bible, and with common sense. If we wanted to allow the strong to plunder the weak, we wouldn't need to bother with forming a government. Who needs the paperwork? It's only if we want each person to possess what is rightfully his, regardless of his personal ability to defend it, that we authorize a few to use force to protect the property of everyone.

[The legislature] being but the joint power of every member of the society...[that power] can be no more than those persons had in a state of nature before they entered into society, and gave up to the community: for no body can transfer to another more power than he has in himself; and no body has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life or property of another.

Government operates as a deputized agent of "We the People." I can only authorize my representative to do something I could lawfully do myself. If I don't have the right to point a gun at someone and relieve him of his wallet, then I can't convey that right to the government. By the way, I think it would put a major crimp the socialist agenda if we could cut out the middleman and make the robbers do their own actual robbing. (But who would pick up all the dead socialists?)

It can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience....

Here, the Obama worldview is displayed in its full, naked absurdity. We hire a government for the purpose of securing our property, and then ask our servants to please enslave us and take our property! No, those who would rob us, whether far away in Washington or standing right in front of us, are not "compassionate" folks who seek our "welfare," but enemies who desire our harm, though they may not understand the true nature of their position.

For no government can have a right to obedience from a people ...till they are allowed their due property, which is so to be proprietors of what they have, that no body can take away any part of it without their own consent, without which, men under any government are not in the state of freemen, but are direct slaves under the force of war.

The Fifth Amendment said the same. "No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

There is therefore, secondly, another way whereby governments are dissolved, and that is, when the legislative, or the prince, either of them, act contrary to their trust. The legislative acts against the trust reposed in them, when they endeavour to invade the property of the subject, and to make themselves, or any part of the community, masters, or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties, or fortunes of the people.

Locke says that a government that robs Peter for the alleged benefit of Paul is "dissolved." It is no longer authorized to use the force entrusted to it, because it has violated that trust.

Thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of any body, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject....

Barack Obama did not begin this war. Nor did LBJ or FDR. It's been going on for a long time. And, to end where I began, the President is right: "Spreadin' the wealth around" and bleating about "fairness" is not engaging in class warfare. There's no class about it. It's a war on us all.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.... — The Declaration of Independence

© Dan Popp