The View From the Liberal Zookeepers

One popular tactic used by champions of the welfare state is to slander those who have worked diligently for their success.  The slander has worked, leading to a public perception that the rich got that way by stealing from the poor.  This perception includes that wealth-producing activities are unseemly and that free-market economic activity causes, rather than cures, poverty.  Just as it is wrong for a zookeeper to allow one elephant to eat considerably more than another, so it must be wrong for the government to allow one human or company to acquire or possess significantly more than another.

This view is consistent, of course, with the Leftist view that humans are merely another species of animal.  Secularists believe, if they stop to actually think about it, that humans contribute little or nothing to the satisfying of their needs.  Like animals, they can only exist on what is already available.  In other words, humans consume.  Therefore, isn’t it only proper of our Beltway zookeepers to equalize distribution and consumption?  Unfortunately, our nation’s politically correct (but morally incorrect) answer is to take from those who seem to have too much and redistribute the proceeds to those who seem to have too little, just as a responsible zookeeper would do.

In the view of government bureaucrats, entrepreneurs who create and market new technology and products in our country are very smart animals, but animals nevertheless.  By some form of skullduggery, under cover of darkness while the zookeepers were not watching, these entrepreneurs somehow seized more that their “fair” share.  They are obviously depriving others of that to which they are entitled.  After all, there are only so many bones, fish and pieces of meat available in the keepers’ bucket.

Thus our government zookeepers attempt to repair their mistakes by the vigilant taxation and prosecution of companies which have been “too” successful.  To gain votes, politicians often encourage those who have made self-destructive decisions in their lives to feel scorn for those who deployed self-discipline to become productive.  There is no better way than to exhibit a revulsion for what I call ethical capitalism.  Today we hear people referring to the 1980s as a period of moral depravity.  These individuals consider the miracle of economic enterprise to be the human equivalent of dogs fighting over a bone.

When America followed the biblical blueprint, it was clear that buying, selling, owning property , and being successful in business should evoke no psychological discomfort.  Economic activity is another way in which we satisfyingly distance ourselves from the animal kingdom and justify our humanity.

But if we continue to accept the godless alternative, then indeed we do not differ in kind from monkeys or other animals, only in degree.  Animals do not create wealth, they merely seize the commodities they need; people obviously do the same.  They may employ more sophisticated methods like bonds, debentures, taxation, and penalization of success, but it is seizing nonetheless.  Is it merely coincidence that those who most strongly advance evolution as the one and only approach to our origins are also those who most strongly oppose the free market?

Clearly, morally sensitive people must decry this activity.  If God created us and touched us with His abilities, then we are qualitatively different from animals.  Our ability to speak and to create is unique.  Therefore, animals plunder but people profit; the creation of wealth is an expression of our godly origins.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.227-228