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Saturday, November 01, 2008

Pharaoh Obama

"Hence as all history informs us, there has been in every state and kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing and governed; the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less... Generally... the ruling power carries its point... and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater the need the prince has of money to distribute among his partizans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants forever."

The preceding is from Benjamin Franklin's speech at the Constitutional Convention suggesting that the officers of government should not recieve salaries.

I suggest that it applies as a warning about those who seek government on the platform of raising taxes and redistributing wealth, or spreading the wealth around as they inartfully describe it: They promise to take the income of those who earned it and give it to their partizans who did not; provide money and healthcare to them, making them their servants forever.

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