Since when did the people of the United States become a society which demonizes success and seeks to punish prosperity?

In a nation built on free enterprise, hard work, ingenuity and risk-taking, we have now largely become a nation of whiners who look at those who have put in the effort and received the rewards as so undeserving of those rewards that we are quite willing to hire a thug (the government) to go and steal some of it from them.

Of course, this government thuggery is wrapped in a veil of pseudo-respectability we call "fairness."

But is it fair to soak the rich while people in lower income brackets pay a smaller percentage...or no taxes at all?

Larry Elder's latest at TownHall.com, "In Defense of the Rich," tells a truth which may surprise many of the envious:

The top 5 percent (those making more than $153,542 -- the group whose taxes Obama seeks to raise) pay 60 percent of all federal income taxes. The rich (aka the top 1 percent of income earners, those making more than $388,806 a year), according to the IRS, pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 1 percent's taxes comprise 17 percent of the federal government's revenue from all sources, including corporate taxes, excise taxes, social insurance and retirement receipts.

Wow! It certainly seems the wealthy are paying more--far more--than their fair share of the tax burden.

Why aren't average Americans more appreciative of the fact that "the rich" are paying not only their fair share, but a lion's share of the tax pie?  Because most of them don't have the slightest idea of this one-sided Marxist system.

Elder continues:

Now, what do people think the rich pay? The IBD/TIPP poll found that 36 percent of those polled thought the rich contribute 10 percent or less of all federal income taxes. Another 15 percent thought the rich pay between 10 and 20 percent, while another 10 percent thought the rich's share is between 20 and 30 percent. In other words, most people thought the rich pay less -- far less -- than they actually do. Only 12 percent of those polled thought the rich pay more than 40 percent.

To add insult to injury, Elder points out that 30% of Americans don't pay federal income taxes at all!

So why all this incredible angst over the need for the rich to "pay their fair share?"  Is it simply a pursuit of what's right?

Or is it simple envy?

Envy has always been a human failing.  However, like never before in human history we now have a political class which fuels and fosters envy on a scale which is truly gross.

The fact that this political class does so while maintaining a facade of being "for the little guy" only adds to disingenuousness of the whole exercise.

For they aren't really for "the little guy;" they set special rules and privileges for themselves, even as they decry the hard-workers and risk-takers who pay their salary.  Rather, they are the the pigs of George Orwell's Animal Farm, touting: all animals are equal...but some animals (the pigs) are more equal than others. 

Americans once hailed the virtue of hard work, creativity and rational risk-taking.  For too long we've allowed Marxists to sell us envy.

It's time we pushed ourselves away from the table of envy and greed, and set our minds and hands to the task of creating our own wealth and our own destiny.