We're all taught that the entrepreneurs and inventors who lift everyone under capitalism and freedom are "robber barons." The implication is: They stole something. What did they steal? No answer is given. Instead, we're told to rely upon the least capable and honest among the population: Professional politicians. THEY are the ones to trust, we are told, when it comes to economic wealth production, security and growth. We're told to rely on those who are crafty and skillful at manipulating and redistributing while minimizing, denigrating or even destroying those who create that which is to be manipulated and redistributed. How smart is this?!

Earth to America: This makes no sense! Let me suggest a psychological explanation for the mindset of those who claim that great innovators in business and technology are "stealing." It's called psychological projection. Psychological projection refers to accusing another of what you, yourself, know you're guilty of -- but don't want to admit. I submit that many of those who denigrate or otherwise marginalize those who produce the wealth which makes the capitalist engine hum know, on some level, that the trillions of dollars taken out of the productive economy to flush down the toilet of the welfare-regulatory state is, in fact, unjust stealing. Instead of owning up to what they know they are doing, or advocating, they place the label on someone else. Projection is irrational but it's part of how many human beings operate, particularly those who are wrong about most things as today's liberal socialists are.

Theft is properly defined as taking, through force or deception, that which rightfully belongs to another. Socialists and liberals take from those who produce and give to those who cannot and will never produce what was taken -- and who insist that they are entitled to it, to boot. If American civilization as we have known it collapses, this will be what did it. If it rises again to newer and greater heights, it will only be because the people being stolen from finally said: Enough!