Capitalism has served us well. It has won wars, started revolutions, and brought countless thousands out of poverty. Never before have we seen such wealth, such abundance. And it has made America the most powerful nation on Earth. Spreading like wildfire from the British Empire and overseas, capitalism has been our constant companion, our trusted friend. And capitalism, my friends, is dying.
It started with a bad assumption. When our fore-fathers laid down this great nation, they conceived it in liberty as a place where no man would ever be less than equal. They laid down systems, checks and balances on power, to prevent the despotism of an absolute monarch. They formed and reformed ideals of liberty; but those ideals were imperfect. No more hereditary transfer of power. But they forgot one thing. Wealth is power. And the generational transfer of wealth has created for us new nobles. New landowners and overlords and petty dukes. But we have failed to realize our danger. Like a frog in slowly boiling water.
If we are to be true to the founding of our nation, to its ideals; if we are to be men of honor, and Americans all; if we are to be something more than what the rich and powerful tell us that we are and allow us to be: we must reclaim what our forefathers laid down for us. A nation conceived in liberty, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Not the right to servitude. Not the right to bowing and scraping to the elite, to the nobles and petty tyrants of America. We have created for ourselves a ruling class; a despotism. Now it is time that we exterminate it.
I do not call for an end to capitalism. A man may hoard wealth. A man may even acquire so much wealth as to be unstoppable. But that man and his wealth should end with his death. No man deserves to inherit what he did not earn; no weaker heir the profits of his sires. The problem is not that we have elite; it is that we have elite by birth. Nobles of heredity in all but name. If we wish the meritocracy our forefathers intended, each generation must earn it for themselves. Each group of graduates pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Each new set of heirs become, like their forefathers before them, the self-made men. We can have no greater purpose.