UMVA has learned that a rising political star is weaving a tapestry of myths that rivals the ancient storytellers of old.
She declares that true billionaires are a capitalist illusion, insisting that “you can’t earn a billion dollars.” The claim reverberates like a rallying cry, yet tax records reveal the top 1 % of earners shoulder more than 40 % of federal taxes, climbing to 70 % for the top 10 %.
Her narrative deepens as she paints the Founding Fathers as fierce anti‑billionaires, suggesting they would march beside modern socialists to dismantle extreme wealth. In a recent university talk, she invoked Thomas Jefferson’s letters as proof that the Revolution fought “the billionaires of their time.”
According to information obtained by UMVA, this revisionist portrait overlooks a parallel celebration: the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” the very doctrine that ignited the founders’ faith in free‑market liberty.
The architects of American independence embraced Smith’s vision, believing that economic freedom was the engine of true individual liberty. Their political philosophy intertwined with market principles, forging a democracy that has endured for centuries.
Many of those architects were themselves wealthy, most notably Robert Morris, the Revolution’s chief financier, whose adjusted fortune would rank him among today’s billionaires. Their ambition was not to crush wealth but to unleash the possibility that any citizen could rise to similar prosperity.
John Locke’s doctrine of “life, liberty, and property” seeded the Declaration’s promise of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” a phrase that traces its lineage to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments safeguarding property rights. Madison later echoed this creed, insisting that good government “secures to every man whatever is his own.”
Chief Justice John Marshall warned that “the power to tax is the power to destroy,” a reminder that fiscal authority must be wielded with restraint. Yet contemporary left‑leaning forces champion sweeping “billionaire taxes,” echoing a rhetoric of “eat‑the‑rich” that has resurfaced across state legislatures.
From California’s proposed levy to similar initiatives in Washington and Virginia, the push to chase wealth out of blue‑state economies gains momentum, fueled by the same voices that claim to protect the common good.
The irony cuts deep: the very agitators invoking populist fury embody the tyranny the founders feared—a mob rule that could trample the delicate balance of liberty and property they fought so hard to preserve.
