An excellent article by Gary Horne at American Thinker:
Recent abuses of power are a reminder that the barbarians are still with us, using the power of progressive government to punish anyone who dares oppose them. Barbarians have no regard for others and depend on plunder for their existence, as they have throughout history, taking from the productive by force.
J. Bronowski described the barbarian Genghis Khan in The Ascent of Man:
From AD 1200 to 1300 they made almost the last attempt to establish the supremacy of the robber who produces nothing and who, in his feckless way, comes to take from the peasant (who has nowhere to flee) the surplus that agriculture accumulates.
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The victim of plunder is not free, as Mark Levin remarks in Liberty and Tyranny:
In the civil society, private property and liberty and inseparable. The individual’s right to live freely and safely and pursue happiness includes the right to acquire and possess property, which represents the fruits of his own intellectual and/or physical labor. As the individual’s time on earth is finite, so, too, is his labor. The illegitimate denial or diminution of his private property enslaves him to another and denies him his liberty.
The American who has worked hard and earned his own surplus is no better off than the peasant confronted by a Mongol raid. At least the Mongols were honest. They came to plunder. They probably didn’t tell the peasant, “We are just collecting your fair share.” The new plunderers claim to be the champions of “the unfortunate” or “the poor,” for who would dare to be against the unfortunate? Wealth redistribution by plunder is not compassion, and it is not charity. Charity is voluntary. Plunder is forbidden by all the major religions. The moral standard is not “Thou shalt steal for others,” but “Thou shalt not steal.”
