A Giant Immorality Portrayed As Truth

"We have enshrined a giant immorality as truth - that individual earnings belong to the collective rather than to those who produce them, and that we can in the name of the collective confiscate ever-larger portions of those earnings to advance our own individual lives and businesses in the form of pork, privileges, subsidies, loans, and entitlements."

Nelson Hultberg

Confiscate is a good word here.

But immorality?

Yes!  It is no less immoral to legislate thievery, in whatever form (taxes, surtaxes, fees, licensing, fines, you name it), than it is to put together a gang and rustle up some funds from people walking down the street!

Morality is defined by Oxford as

1.  concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character
2.  conforming to acceptable standards of behavior
3.  the extent to which an action is right or wrong

Morality comes from the Latin word "moralis," or 'custom.'  As a prefix "im" has variant spellings depending on the letter of the word it is modifying - it's other spellings are "in," "ir," and "il."  In any spelling variant the prefix means NOT, or THE OPPOSITE OF. 

IMmorality, therefore, means the opposite of morality.  And IMmoral means the opposite of moral.

Is it immoral or moral to pick a pocket?  Is it immoral or moral to rob a bank?  Is it immoral or moral to make anyone's successful financial outcome to a righteous risk or venture appear as shady and unfair?  Is it immoral or moral to legislate that more and more of someone's financial outcome to a righteous risk or venture be confiscated in the name of the rest of the group?

When did the rugged individualism that founded and grew this country and its principles into something exceptional get replaced by this idea that the "collective," to use Hultberg's word, and the collectives' wants, trumps the individual?  

And where has the country that extols collectivism developed into something exceptional and lead the world to new heights?

When did the expected entitlement supersede the right to the possession of one's private property?  And when did the right to the possession of one's private property become the expected entitlement of someone else?