Much of the hostility toward private wealth comes from the same impulse: hatred of its ability to insulate the citizen from the will of the state. Money empowers resistance; it gives one the ability to buy some gold coins, for example, and thereby hold a measure of independence from the monetary monopoly of the state; to send children to a private school and avoid the brainwashing of the public education monopoly; to open a foreign bank account and provide oneself with protection against legal confiscation schemes. Propaganda alleging the immorality of inherited wealth is also a reflection of the assault on the family. Before he dropped into noumenal oblivion, Charles Reich wrote that private property “guards the troubled boundary between individual man and the state,” but that there is a new wealth that has replaced it, one dispensed in myriad forms by the state. Increasingly, therefore, “Americans live on government largesse – allocated by government on its own terms, and held by recipients subject to conditions which express ‘the public interest.’ ” People who are thus described are more likely to be compliant servants of the authorities than are those who earn their living by giving value to private citizens who prize what they have to offer.

Idols for Destruction – Herbert Schlossberg