JONATHAN TURLEY: AOC's war on billionaires twists America's birth into a socialist myth

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is accelerated becoming the top fabulist since Aesop.

Recently, Ocasio-Cortez insisted that existent billionaires are a capitalist story since "you can’t gain a cardinal dollars." However, her top enactment of fabrication whitethorn beryllium her insistence that the Framers fought against billionaires and would person joined her and different socialists successful seeking to eradicate them today.

Bertrand Russell erstwhile noted that "there is thing feeble and a small contemptible" astir those "who cannot look the perils of beingness without the assistance of comfy myths."

The American near has agelong peddled specified "comfortable myths" arsenic the affluent "not paying their just share" of taxes. The apical 1% of income earners wage implicit 40% of national taxes, and that percent goes up to 70% for the apical 10%.

AOC DOUBLES DOWN ON ‘MYTH’ OF EARNING A BILLION DOLLARS, CLAIMS FORTUNES ARE BUILT ON ‘ABUSE’

However, Ocasio-Cortez has go a wide Homer for her estimation for spinning collectivist tales. What is awesome is her myth-within-a-myth signature style: "You can’t gain that, right? And truthful you person to make a story … you person to make a story of earning it."

In a treatment astatine the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Ocasio-Cortez gave her revisionist relationship of the Founders as, surprise, budding anti-capitalists:

"I privation to speech astir however this is successful the practice of our country, due to the fact that America was founded … you look astatine Thomas Jefferson penning to Madison successful revolt of British aristocracy. The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. And we are declaring independency from specified an utmost matrimony of wealthiness and powerfulness and the authorities that the voices of mundane radical did not exist."

AOC TRIPLES DOWN, CLAIMS AMERICAN REVOLUTION WAS AGAINST 'THE BILLIONAIRES OF THEIR TIME'

In my caller book, "Rage and the Republic," I sermon the economical doctrine of the Founders successful exploring the past and aboriginal of this unsocial republic.

While Ocasio-Cortez references our 250th anniversary, she ignores that it is besides the 250th day of Adam Smith’s "The Wealth of Nations." Smith’s free-market mentation was an instant deed with the founding generation. These men had conscionable created the archetypal large Enlightenment Revolution based connected a content successful earthy rights that came from God, not governments.

Yet, they knew that existent idiosyncratic liberty could not beryllium achieved without economical freedom. Smith’s economical mentation was the cleanable companion for their governmental theory.

PROTECTING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN OUR 250TH YEAR

The operation of American antiauthoritarian theories and free-market theories produced the world’s astir palmy and oldest ideology successful history. In "Rage and the Republic," I sermon the threats to this republic, including from figures similar Ocasio-Cortez, who dispersed socialist myths. The publication calls for a recommitment to what I telephone a "liberty-enhancing economy."

That is wherefore this peculiar story told by Ocasio-Cortez was truthful jarring. The Founders were large believers successful capitalism and the escaped market. They were not warring "the billionaires of their time" implicit their wealth. Many of the Founders were themselves rather wealthy, including banker Robert Morris Jr., who was known arsenic the "Financier of the Revolution."

Adjusting for ostentation and existent rates, Morris would beryllium a billionaire today.

DAVID MARCUS: DON'T BE SO SURE SOCIALISTS CAN'T WIN IN THE HEARTLAND

The Founders believed successful unleashing everyone’s quality to go a Morris. They fought against the taking oregon concern of spot by the government. At the precise apical of their stated intent for the American Revolution was "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks astatine the Munich Security Conference successful Munich, Germany, connected Feb. 13, 2026. (Alex Kraus/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The operation was virtually ripped from the leafage of John Locke’s "life, liberty, and property." Locke believed that determination was a earthy close to spot created by what God near "in common" for humanity. Preceding immoderate government, it was a close that belonged to quality beings by divine grant. Hardly a roaring endorsement of socialist ideals or, arsenic Zohran Mamdani enactment it, the "warmth of collectivism."

George Mason relied connected Locke for his draught of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which Jefferson relied connected heavily. Mason wrote of "the enjoyment of beingness and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

THE UNWINNABLE WAR AMERICA'S FOUNDING FATHERS FOUGHT AND WON CHANGED HUMAN HISTORY FOREVER

Of course, the spot notation was changed to happiness successful the Declaration, which reflected the much transcendent values of these Enlightenment devotees.

While reduced to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," the archetypal connection appeared successful the Fifth Amendment and, later, successful the Fourteenth Amendment, protecting citizens from being "deprived of life, liberty, oregon property."

In his 1792 effort "Property," Madison echoed Lockean values successful declaring that bully authorities "secures to each antheral immoderate is his own."

WASHINGTON DEMS PASSED AN INCOME TAX THEY KNOW IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. THAT WAS THE POINT

Other aboriginal figures, similar Chief Justice John Marshall, wrote, "The powerfulness to taxation is the powerfulness to destroy."

The top irony is that Ocasio-Cortez personifies what the Founders genuinely wanted to combat. They feared mobocracy and the tyranny of the majority, the arbitrary powerfulness that tin travel from majoritarian abuse.

The caller myth-making connected the near is meant to revive what I antecedently described arsenic "economic factionalism," seeking governmental powerfulness with this benignant of "eat-the-rich" rhetoric. It is working, arsenic it has passim history. In California, galore are pushing a "billionaires’ tax," portion far-left figures similar Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are pushing for a national variation.

In states from Washington to Virginia, Democrats are virtually chasing affluent taxpayers retired of bluish states with planned millionaire taxes.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

To execute specified extremist change, you indispensable archetypal destruct the values upon which this republic was born, convincing radical that their cardinal ties to capitalism are arsenic ephemeral arsenic existent billionaires.

The top irony is that Ocasio-Cortez personifies what the Founders genuinely wanted to combat. They feared mobocracy and the tyranny of the majority, the arbitrary powerfulness that tin travel from majoritarian abuse.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and others are genuinely not caller oregon peculiarly absorbing additions to the governmental dialogue. They are the aforesaid voices of antiauthoritarian despotism that Madison and others sought to quell.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JONATHAN TURLEY