Ro Khanna Should Know Better; And He Does
Legalized Plunder, the 16th Amendment, and Learing Centers
In 1850, Frédéric Bastiat, a Frenchman with the unfortunate habit of being right about everything, observed a curious glitch in the civilizational matrix. He noticed that the Law, historically intended as a bulwark for private property, was being steadily retooled into a highly efficient vacuum cleaner for the citizen’s pockets. He called this “Legal Plunder.” For roughly a century, the American Republic stood as the world’s only functioning firewall against this particular brand of larceny, largely because the Founders had the foresight to treat the federal treasury like a loaded gun.
Not Ours To Take
Under the old regime, guided by what the Romans called the Mos Maiorum, or the “custom of the ancestors”, Uncle Sam was a lean, occasionally petulant umpire. Balls and strikes. He subsisted on a diet of tariffs (plunder of different kind!) from imported silks and the excise on a gentleman’s tobacco. If the federal government harbored any ambitions of a “direct tax” on a man’s actual existence, it ran headlong into the Apportionment Clause. This was the constitutional equivalent of a “No Trespassing” sign; it mandated that taxes be levied proportionally across the states. It was the ultimate social contract: if a Congressman had the audacity to demand a dollar from you, he had to look his own neighbor in the eye and demand the same.
Consider the awe of Alexis de Tocqueville, who in 1830 marveled at an America where the state was essentially a ghost. Invisible. He noted that “the motor is nowhere to be seen,” yet the laws were executed with a vigor that left Europeans (accustomed to the heavy hand of over-administration) utterly baffled. This was a society that moved itself, without the need for a central bureaucrat to grease the wheels with other people’s money.
Decades later, the legendary Davy Crockett would provide the moral exclamation point to this era. When faced with a bill to provide a widow with public funds, he famously rebuked his colleagues with the icy reminder that “it is not ours to give.” Crockett understood what the modern “Pied Pipers” have spent a century trying to make us forget: that the legislature has no “charity” to dispense, only the seized property of the people they represent. It’s a sentiment that makes the modern public school educated voter squirm a bit, but was core to the founding of the country.
Surprise, You’re Rich
Then came 1913. The year the Pied Pipers of the Progressive era finally led the children into the mountains. A concern over “swollen fortunes” mixed with a rising ambitious government class eager to get into line of business to sway the public to change the Constitution.
The 16th Amendment was not merely a “modernization” of the fiscal apparatus; it was a moral coup d’état. It was sold with the same greasy sincerity a used car salesman uses to move a lemon. “Fear not,” the Progressives cooed, “this is merely a levy on the unimaginably opulent. It shall never touch the common man.” It was the original “Tax the Rich” bait-and-switch—a populist siren song that convinced the many to sharpen the knife that would eventually be used to skin them. In 1913, only one in 271 Americans was invited to pay, at a rate so microscopic, 1%, that it seemed more like a rounding error than a revolution. Proponents scoffed at “alarmists” who suggested the rate might one day reach twenty percent. Twenty percent? One might as well have predicted that horses would fly.
The ‘alarmists’ were proven to have Nostradamus-like abilities. You my friend, are rich.
Well, the children went off the cliff and the rats are still here (and probably always will be) because the Pied Pipers were playing a more subterranean long game. By excising the Apportionment Clause, they didn’t merely secure a new revenue stream; they legalized envy. They opened the door to legalized plunder. They successfully transformed the federal government into a gargantuan, state-sponsored, idiocracy-powered vending machine where a simple majority can vote for a productive minority to pay for the refreshments. It is an immutable law of political physics: perverted law inevitably causes social conflict. So here we are , divided, with a broken system, just the right environment for a new breed of progressives to regurgitate the same income tax arguments, only this time to push a wealth tax. Less freedom will follow.
A Note on Mr. Khanna
We are often tempted to treat Mr. Khanna with the soft bigotry of low expectations - to assume he is merely an earnest victim of a substandard California education (he’s from Pennsylvania!), genuinely unaware that he is playing with civilizational matches. But that is far too charitable. Ro Khanna is no naif; he is a man of significant credentialed intelligence who knows exactly what he is doing. He is not stumbling into these arguments; he is carefully choosing his notes on the Progressive flute to see just how many children will follow him toward the cliff. He understands the history, he understands the math, and yet he persists in peddling the same “Bait and Switch” arguments precisely because he knows that his base has already been lobotomized by government schools and media. It’s his path to more power.
A Broken System
Perhaps Mr. Khanna truly believes a wealth tax is just the remedy we need to cure the ills of our divided nation. But we know how this plays out. Bastiat warned that once the ‘excluded classes’ realize they have the franchise, they don’t seek to end the plunder - they seek to participate in it, whether that’s through confiscatory taxes or elite educational instructions like the “Learing Centers” in Minnesota. I would certainly like to see all Americans improve their lives, but this is not the way to more freedom and a better country - as good false philanthropy might make Ro Khanna feel. Corrupt and ineffective governments should be the last institutions that we entrust the fruits of our labor or the wealth of our nation. Less, not more government is the way.
1913 was the moment we ceased being independent stakeholders and became clients of a predatory administrative state. The radical Progressives of the era didn’t just rewrite the tax code; they broke the seal. The income tax brought an expanded Federal government and less individual freedom. Progressives ushered in American version of Lex Sempronia Frumentaria. From here forward, the bread and the vote would be linked. And as any armchair historian of the late Roman Republic can tell you, once the mob discovers it can vote itself the contents of the granary, the music doesn’t stop until the granary is empty and the flute player is thrown from the Tarpeian Rock.
Mr. Khanna has already caused the largest exit of wealth from California ever according to Chamath Palihapitiya. Mr. Khanna reponse? He mocked them because he knows he doesn't need because he’s coming after your money, too. Already he looks to make his wealth tax Federal. How long before he wants to build a wall?
Writer’s Note
A Note on Manners: While the preceding may strike some as a trifle uncharitable toward Mr. Khanna, I assure you it is born of the highest respect for the intellect he purportedly possesses. In an age of performative ignorance, I find it only polite to assume a man of his standing is a conscious architect of his own ideology, rather than a mere passenger on the Progressive short-bus. So he has that going for him.
I am an enthusiastic student of the Western Civilization and a firm believer that Ronald Reagan’s “nine most terrifying words” were intended as a warning and a punchline, not a creed and an outline.