You know the Socialist progressives at ProgressNow New Mexico are losing a fight when they have to use our nation’s founders to appeal to and persuade people to see things their way.
ProgressNow NM is now claiming that our founders were Socialists and have confused equal opportunity with government mandated “wealth equality.” This is another failed attempt by ProgressNow NM to push for a higher minimum wage and other economy-killing laws.
Laughable, right? Read what the Lefties have come up with now:
by alexcurtas
To see how far removed modern conservatism is from what the Founding Fathers envisioned for our grand American experiment we need only look to what people like George Washington, James Madison, John Adams, and others had to say about the detriments of income inequality. A great short article from Newsweek highlights this much-forgotten fact:
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The founders, despite decades of rancorous disagreements about almost every other aspect of their grand experiment, agreed that America would survive and thrive only if there was widespread ownership of land and businesses.
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George Washington…predicted that America “will be the most favorable country of any kind in the world for persons of industry and frugality, possessed of moderate capital, to inhabit.” And, he continued, “it will not be less advantageous to the happiness of the lowest class of people, because of the equal distribution of property.”
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James Madison, the Constitution’s main author, described inequality as an evil, saying government should prevent “an immoderate, and especially unmerited, accumulation of riches.” He favored “the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigents towards a state of comfort.”***
Gee, those sure don’t sound like the arch-capitalists conservatives would like to make our Founding Fathers out to be. Their point was pretty clear: democracy can’t thrive when one small group of people controls the majority of the wealth (especially when the control of that wealth is artificially obtained through choice tax breaks and the influence of special interests)…
“Equality” by our founders definition meant equal opportunity for all (well for most, unfortunately our founders were unable to rid us of slavery…).
Religious persecution and the ability to make a living without being taxed to death were two important reasons many people came to America in the first place. After our nation was founded there was never a discussion of government subsidies or set wages because government was relatively limited from the beginning.
What did your founders actually say? Here’s what Madison had to say about “social welfare”:
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“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress…. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.”
Obviously Alex Curtas and ProgressNow NM missed their history lessons. They are unfamiliar with our founders writings and speeches. The founders encouraged everyone to work hard and be free to earn their living, but never intended for government to be as involved in the lives of people as it is today!
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