The verdict is in. Bernie Madoff was sentenced to prison for 150 years. The man who operated the most expensive and elaborate Ponzi scheme in history is going to spend the rest of his life in a cage. And for good reason, too. The man cheated victims out of billions of dollars of their hard-earned money so that he and his wife Ruthie could live a life of luxury beyond belief. The man is an evil villain, for he has destroyed countless lives by swindling others and living off of their hard work.

The liberal media portrays the Bernie Madoff scandal as yet another example of Wall Street greed at its worst. But I see it in a different light. Rather than use this story as a tool to promulgate class envy and criticize capitalism and the private sector, I want to examine the underlying principle of what makes Madoff's actions so evil.

Fundamental to liberty is the possession of private property. As Mark Levin states in his book, Liberty and Tyranny, "Private property is the material manifestation of the individual's labor -- the material value created from the intellectual and/or physical labor of the individual, which may take the form of income, real property, or intellectual property." (p. 62) Human beings were created to work, created to imagine, created to be creative and spontaneous, to achieve ends, and to have a purpose. The property we acquire, in whatever form is takes, is tangible validation of our efforts, a physical reminder that what we do with our lives has meaning and purpose. It is true, materialism is the perversion of human achievement. Once material things supersede the immaterial in importance, the proper order of things become corrupt. But material possessions, in themselves, are not an evil.

Abraham Lincoln said it well:

Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable..is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may be rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

God created human beings with the capacity to work, to acquire, and to share. But there is a huge difference between freely sharing what you have and someone forcefully taking it from you.

In the final analysis, is there any calculable difference between what Bernie Madoff did to his victims and what the United States federal government is doing to its citizens right now? Every day, as the federal government and its massive budget deficit grows larger and larger, private property ever becomes public property. The massive redistribution of wealth in America through taxation is the liberals' attempt to impose a governmental, economic, and moral structure on individuals through controlling and destroying the human spirit. The government steals what is rightfully earned for the supposed "public good." This public good is determined by the elected few whose motives are tainted by political self-survival and special interests. These people believe that through the redistribution of wealth they may achieve a Marxist utopia, and to them the death of liberty is merely a casualty of war.

Bernie Madoff's victims are left without their hard-earned money, and along with that their security and in many ways their children's futures. A lifetime of hard work of so many has been flushed down the drains for the benefit of those who did not earn it. My fear is that the same thing is happening in Washington D.C. as I speak.

Our Father's fought tyranny and died for the cause of liberty. They established a Constitution that served to restrict the scope, size, and role of the federal government. A day may soon be coming when this country's citizens may once more need to stand up and fight for liberty. I, for one, am not willing to lose this battle through ignorance and apathy. What about you?

Labels: politics