We must not let our "rulers" complete their "transformative" intentions by ongoing manufactured "crises," each one ceding more power to the central government.
Instead, American citizens must recognize that, for "the People," the question is between freedom and slavery to government.
"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the wuestion in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle [usurpation of power], and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much . . . to forget it." - James Madison
". . . we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. - Thomas Jefferson
". . . nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers presss upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The reveue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society." - John Adams
The Republican leadership does not effectively fight the class hatred rhetoric of the Left. They had better learn to do so, or we will continue to lose our way.
A proper response would start with a reference to the tax policy set out in Article I, Section 9, of the Federal Constitution, which forbids any direct tax on the citizenry that is not per capita (i.e., does not fall equally on every citizen). While this was changed by the Sixteenth Amendment to allow tax on income, that does not make the idea of a confiscatory tax on some citizens--a penalty for daring to succeed--any less onerous.
The Founding Fathers believed in equal access to the Courts & protection of the property rights of all--including a recognition of the sanctity of contracts, the enforcement of contract rights;--but the idea of using Government to take from Peter to corrupt Paul was anathema. We need to stand firm against the Socialist Egalitarian war on human achievement. It is, indeed, the Greatest Mischief Ever Wrought.
No one should ever be made to apologize for success; no one should be demonized for not agreeing to be penalized to fund the folly of Social Engineers, trying to undo what others achieve; or to reduce the less successful in any society to dependence upon demagogues & scoundrels..
William Flax