“THOU SHALT NOT STEAL”
by Linda Goudsmit, ©2018, blogging at Pundicity
(Nov. 13, 2018) — In the 18th century our Founding Fathers fought the War of Independence to escape the tyranny of the British monarchy. Our Founding Fathers envisioned a New World where citizens of the United States of America would be bound by the Constitution and live as free individuals in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The 10 Commandments were foundational to the Judeo-Christian tradition of the United States and to its ordered liberty. The Commandments provided the infrastructure and moral basis for the secular laws written to govern American society.
The separation of church and state was an acknowledgement that different religious doctrines existed within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment were a defense against the tyranny of an official state religion.
What our Founding Fathers did not envision was the secular tyranny of collectivism – collectivism is a late-19th-century political ideology.
“Thou Shalt Not Steal” is the 8th Commandment that strictly forbids stealing. So, let’s talk about stealing – the taking of another person’s property.
Stealing assumes a separation between “self” and “other” and is an acknowledgement of property rights. That is, one person cannot take another person’s property unless both parties acknowledge that each person has a separate existence and that property belonging to one is not the property of the other.
There would be no moral injunction against stealing and no Commandment or secular law against stealing without this fundamental acknowledgement.
The problem with collectivism, whether it is socialism or communism, is that it defies this most fundamental acknowledgement. Collectivism denies the property rights of an individual and, therefore, that individual’s existence as a separate entity.
Collectivism says that what is yours belongs to the state and the state is the entity that determines its distribution. Theoretically, without property rights there are no human rights because if what I produce is not mine and the fruits of my labors belong to the state, then I do not belong to myself. I am without human rights.
Collectivist ideology is antagonistic to the Judeo-Christian tradition because it denies the existence of the self. In collectivism the individual’s life belongs to the group.
This most fundamental and critical issue of property rights and its connection to human rights and the self is denied by the humanitarian hucksters selling socialism. When Obama tells business owners “You did not build that” he is denying their human rights and misappropriating them to the state. Obama is the prime-time humanitarian huckster disingenuously selling socialism as the provider of social justice and income equality. He is the consummate con man deceitfully selling “resistance” as freedom-fighting.
What Obama and his sycophants are not saying is that first socialism steals your property and then socialism steals your freedom. Ask the good people of Venezuela who were duped by the humanitarian hucksters selling socialism in their once beautiful and prosperous country. The ruling elite in Venezuela stole the private property of its citizens by socializing the country. Without private property the government had complete cradle-to-grave control of the population – the population ceased to exist as individuals – they had forfeited their freedom to socialism.
The Leftist Democrat Party is the party of collectivism in America that envisions a New World Order similarly antagonistic to the individual. The Left denies the property rights of the individual (“You did not build that”) and, therefore, that individual’s existence as a separate entity. President Donald Trump is the existential enemy of the Leftist Democrat Party because he rejects collectivism entirely. POTUS believes in Americanism, the sovereignty of the United States, equal opportunity, and the freedom of the individual.
Decades of insidious educational indoctrination of America’s youth toward collectivism have made socialism and anything anti-Trump fashionable today.
The recent midterm election was a referendum on socialism and the ongoing contentious battle between individualism and collectivism.
Craig Biddle’s clarifying article explained the divide in 2012, Individualism vs Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice.
Ayn Rand articulated the implications of the choice in the 1960’s:
- “Whoever claims the ‘right’ to ‘redistribute’ the wealth produced by others is claiming the ‘right’ to treat human beings as chattel.”
- “Both [communism and socialism] negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government – and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail, such as the choice of slogans by which the rulers delude their enslaved subjects.”
- “There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism – by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”
The Leftist Democrat Party of collectivism wants open borders, sanctuary cities, illegal immigration, birthright citizenship, and chain migration so that illegal aliens can VOTE!
The Leftist Democrat Party has embraced the tyranny of collectivism in defiance of the 8th Commandment. Leftist Democrats are stealing your liberty with every socialist policy that redistributes your private property, your voting privileges, and your tax dollars to illegal immigrants who will then vote the leftist Democrats into power. Incentivizing illegal immigration to vote themselves into office will eventually award your private property and your individual freedom to the government, which is precisely how socialism enslaves the population by vote.
Open borders and the importation of illegal immigrants is a humanitarian hoax. It is a power grab by Leftist Democrats designed to install themselves as rulers of a socialized America. Venezuela is a cautionary tale. A commitment to socialism is what Obama pledged when he deceitfully promised to “fundamentally transform” America.
Capitalism provides equal opportunity for the American dream in our constitutional republic. Socialism provides equal outcome as promised – eventual shared national poverty because, as Margaret Thatcher so wisely remarked, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” The choice is ours – individualism vs. collectivism.
Our 18th-century Founding Fathers could not envision the tyranny of collectivism, but we 21st-century Americans can.
We cannot allow the Left to steal America – remember the 8th Commandment – Thou Shalt Not Steal.
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Linda Goudsmit
Linda Goudsmit is a devoted wife to husband Rob and they are the parents of four children and the grandparents of four. She and Rob owned and operated a girls clothing store in Michigan for 40 years and retired a few years ago to the beaches of sunny Florida. A graduate of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (B.A. in English literature), Linda has a lifelong commitment to learning and is an avid reader and observer of life. She is the author of Dear America: Who’s Driving the Bus? as well as a children’s series in development, Mimi’s STRATEGY. It is with pride and humility that she is sharing her thoughts, observations, and philosophy of behavior in the many articles she has written that are featured on this website.
See Linda’s Pundicity page and website. Contact Linda at info@lindagoudsmit.com