A key graph from a piece well worth reading, by Paul Rahe over at Ricochet:
But what was at issue in 1896 and what will be at issue in 2012 is not sharing: it is taking. It is using coercive force, which is possessed in plenitude by the government, to be generous with other people’s money, and this is a policy recommended not in the Gospels but in the sixteenth chapter of Machiavelli’s Prince. The real choice is between systematic theft and a public policy aimed at encouraging and enabling individuals to earn their own way, and that is the way it should be pitched in 2012.
