The truth is that the rest of us (i.e., the "royal us") (i.e., you) don't mind playing the game. People don't mind pretending that a tax cut for the rich is some kind of government handout. After all, why speak up? If we don't speak up, that's more cash in our pockets, right? If some liberal politician says you deserve the rich guy's money, who are you to speak up?
ALTRUISTIC BASTARDS BE DAMNED!
That rich man or woman - who's probably making a lot of other people rich, too - earned the money. It's theirs. And fuck you if you're going to tell them they can't have it.
Let's look at you. (Not the millionaire you of above, but the real you.) What if a bunch of poor bastards got together and called you "the rich"? And that you don't deserve as much of your money because you have "enough"?
You do have enough, don't you?
First of all, let's be honest. There's no such thing as enough money. Second of all, whether you have "enough" or not is up to nobody but you. If you want to give up half of your salary away to some welfare addict, that's your prerogative. (Personally, I'd spend at least some of mine on something completely unnecessary, like a car that goes zero to sixty in under five seconds and burns so much goddamn fuel it makes Al Gore lose a big green load in his pants faster than you can say "timber".)
Just because a bunch of us got together and said the rich can "afford" to do without more money, that doesn't make it right. It's not any more right than a bunch of people less productive than you saying you don't have the right to your money. 10,000 Frenchmen saying it doesn't make it right. (Speaking statistically, I bet that the more Frenchmen there are saying it, the less likely it is to be right.)
All of us non-rich need to stand up for the rights of the rich. And we need to start doing it now.
No, not just because we might get lucky and get rich ourselves. But because every man and every woman has the right to their property.
If you don't believe everyone has an unalienable right to his property, at least admit the following. Admit that it's ok with you if the rest of us decide what to do with your property. And if you lose your cigarette money, your beer money, your bible money, or your house: tough shit. You asked for it.
"It must be remembered, that the rich are people as well as the poor; that they have rights as well as others; that they have as clear and as sacred a right to their large property as others have to theirs which is smaller; that oppression to them is as possible and as wicked as to others."
- John Adams*
Ok, so Mr. Adams said it a bit better, and in fewer words. And with fewer swear words. (Though I bet "rich" was still considered vulgar back then.) But the point remains true.
The right to property is the right property.
If you earn it, it's yours.
Case closed.
