Elizabeth Warren’s Confiscation Platform

Few Germans in the Weimar Republic were entitled to own guns. Laws against gun ownership were strictly enforced. When Hitler came to power, the Nazis confiscated the few guns owned by those who opposed them, and quickly armed those who supported them.

Armed resistance by Jews trapped in ghettos did occur, but their impact was limited by both the quantity and quality of the weapons available to them. Normally, the best they could hope for was escape to the partisan resistance.

As the Germans spread and conquered, they confiscated not just guns, but pretty much anything of value they came across. The Nazis amassed an enormous amount of other people’s wealth. With no weapons, and no resources, those who opposed the Nazis could neither defend or flee.

The barbarity of the Third Reich is an extreme and hopefully never repeated example. In the end though, regimes like Hitler’s, or Stalins, or Mao’s or Pol Pot’s, or Maduro’s are the likely result of any society that claims the highest standard of truth resides in the hearts of men.

The leaders of such societies not only can, but likely will, justify any amoral behavior or selfish desire. And the worst are those who claim their actions are necessary for the good of others.

While I don’t really believe the leftist proclivities of today’s Democrat Party will lead to anything approaching the brutality of the Third Reich, I doubt many Germans in Hitler’s early days, fully realized the evil and depravity he would bring. Despots regularly accomplish their goals by pitting one group against another.

Democrats are doing the same thing when they divide by race, gender, age, income, or religion.

Despots regularly enforce strict restrictions on private ownership of guns. That certainly describes Democrat stated hopes.

Despots pronounce that what is your’s should actually belong to someone else, that’s where they start any way. Eventually, of course, you find out what they really mean, “what is your’s is actually their’s.”

Consider Elizebeth Warren’s latest plan.

She says that if you’re super-rich, then you should pay 3% of everything you’re worth each year to the government. If you’re just rich, you should still pay, but only 2% of your assets per year.

Now, I’m no Constitutional scholar, but I have to believe this is un-constitutional. Of course, Warren went to Harvard Law — even if she got in claiming to be related to Geronimo.

Warren doesn’t make clear whether her annual grab of your assets ends when your total financial worth falls below $50 million. But don’t worry, because before that happens, the new qualifying asset amount will no doubt drop to $35 million. If history is any indication, once she learns her new asset tax won’t raise the revenue she hopes, anyone who owns the equivalent of 40 acres and a mule will end up paying.

And Warren’s is far from the only confiscation scheme proposed by liberal Democrats these days. Bernie Sanders says some Americans should pay as much as 80% of their income to Uncle Sam — maybe even more.

Almost all of the current front runners now support the Green New Deal — a massive redistribution scheme that has little to do with the environment and everything to do with rearranging our entire economic system.

Likewise with Medicare-For-All, and the embarrassing pandering Democrats performed at a recent convention of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.

We can shake our head at some of the absurd proposals coming from Democrats like Bernie Sanders and his nationalized health care plans. We can even laugh out loud at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Green New Deal.

But the idea of outright confiscation of assets is symptomatic of a very deep flaw in the left’s understanding of individual rights and human dignity.

It’s true that it shows they don’t realize how very likely it is they will kill the very system they say will pay for all their goofy socialist programs. But it shows more than that. With policies like Warren’s asset confiscation, Democrats betray a shocking disregard for the importance of individual creativity and hard work.

It’s a very short step from that place to the point where they deny the notion of individual dignity all together. When that happens, we’ll have reached “the tipping point” that shifts this from an economic discussion into a human rights problem. The slope is indeed slippery, and Democrats display no hesitation in riding it all the way to the bottom.