Obama regards this trend as necessarily sinister, as indicated by his empathically articulated verdict that the financially successful must have broken the rules. On Page 5, Obama says, "While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not." "Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care, and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected." "There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few. … It's a legacy of irresponsibility, and it is our duty to change it."

Some economists dispute the Piketty-Saez graph and contend that marginal tax cuts have given higher-income producers less reason to shift their income into tax shelters, thus accounting for some of the higher taxable income shown in the graph.

But a more important point is that Obama is ratcheting up his class warfare to levels that would make Marxists blush. This self-professed uniter is sowing distrust and divisiveness among Americans by demonizing groups of people and appealing to our baser instincts of envy and jealousy, in defiance of God's commandments against coveting.

Obama is sending unmistakable signals that he has an unconventional notion -- to say the least -- about the American dream. It's as if he's saying, "It's fine to aspire to financial success, but only to a point, beyond which you'll incur the punitive wrath of the federal government."

It's one thing to maintain that upper-income earners should pay higher tax rates because they are better able to shoulder the burden for essential government services. But it's constitutional blasphemy to claim that the tax code should be used as a weapon against the wealthy and that the state should be the tyrannical arbiter of how income is distributed.

It's hardly surprising that Obama degenerated into incoherent babbling when unconvincingly denying his socialism to a New York Times reporter. But given his war on capitalism and achievement, isn't it time we brought this subject out in the open instead of closing our eyes and pretending we all accept America's free market traditions?

Or would you prefer not invoking the politically incorrect terms "Marxist" or "socialist" until Obama's statist policies have worked their magic to bankrupt America and spread the misery among Americans in a reverse trickledown effect?