Elizabeth Warren: Everything you have belongs to us

Posted by William A. Jacobson Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 4:04pm

This is almost enough to cause me to rescind my Bye Bye Brown pronouncement, because Elizabeth Warren ascending to the Senate to replace Scott Brown would make Ted Kennedy seem like the good ol’ days.

The progressives are in a lather about this video by Warren in which she proclaims an almost perfect theory of why redistribution of wealth must be government policy:

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,’” she said. “No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

In a sense, no one on the current American political scene has said it better — everything you have belongs to the state and the people. You will be allowed to keep some of it, but it doesn’t belong to you.

Remember, this is the woman Obama originally wanted to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.



Warren still has to beat a crowded Democratic field, but my gut tells me she’ll do it because she is a new hero to the left.