The 4th Plank
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1995 <4/16>

      Senator Ted Kennedy, Marxist, fascist and liberal (to be triply redundant,) has proposed a resolution as the sense of Congress that people who leave the United State and renounce their citizenship should pay a severe tax upon their entire assets as the price of leaving.
      This idea is nothing all that new. Most Americans have forgotten its history. It was a tax law of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Most can remember that it was also the tax policy of the socialist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
      There is a common source to these fascist, socialist and liberal ideas. That source is the fourth plank of the Communist Manifesto calling for the "Confiscation of the property of emigrants and rebels."
      Of course those who would defend this by insisting liberals only have noble causes even though they are doing the same things as their fellow Marxists, fascists and communists. Even though it looks and waddles and quacks like a duck it is not one of them kinds of ducks, it is a good duck. And because it is a good duck it can not be one of them ducks.
      This is the kind of so called thinking of those wishing to deny the obvious. But of course they hold the difference it too complex for any but themselves to understand.
      Now where the fascist tax policy can be considered as a remedy for the Depression and the Nazi tax policy can be attributed to both the WW I reparations and the Depression might be excused for a country never rich in hard currency, there is no excuse of this being US tax policy. This is simply the claim that the government has a rights to the assets of the individual over and above all other taxes that have been paid over the years.
      Of course it is not "confiscation" as yet. It is only "partial" confiscation. Perhaps it is a also only a duck with a limp. It is also an idea that appeals to liberals, Marxists and their ilk.
      It rests upon the assumption that all wealth belongs to the country and it is the duty of the government to prevent it from being taken from the country. It is the total rejection that the person has earned the wealth in the first place. The Marxist bent then manifests itself in claiming the money was stolen or in some manner gained immorally rather than earned.
      Not only will Americans be asked for their papers at the other side of the border they will be asked for a statement of their net assets and a check on this side of the border. Of course, nothing so crude is expected. As long as a method is kept "pretty" and clean then it will not appear to be the same as in known totalitarian countries. Certainly the tax will not be collected by people in military uniforms with rifles. It will be collected by people in business suits with briefcases.
      And thus the unobservant will see it as different and the liberals will find a way to defend it by pointing to the lack of uniforms. Not that the exit tax was ever collected by people in uniform in those "evil" countries but since that is the Hollywood image it will be an effective objection.
      This is the first of several articles that will demonstrate the truth of my assertion that liberals, fascists, nazis, socialists and communists are all variations upon the same root of marxism. I expect the equally ingenious denials.