When Obama says that "there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few … and (that) it is our duty to change it," he is not just saying that higher-income earners don't pay their fair share of taxes (which is absurd on its face). He is saying that they make too much money -- as if that is any of his or government's business.

While liberals deny this, all income groups did better under the Reagan tax cuts, from the lowest 20 percent to the highest 20 percent, precisely because marginal rate cuts provided an incentive for production by enhancing the connection between efforts and rewards. People work harder when they're allowed to keep greater portions of the fruits of their labor. Production increases across the board, as does prosperity, thus the term "trickle down."

Conversely, when you separate efforts from rewards, you get less production and less prosperity. True, the higher-income earners earn and keep less, but that does not do middle- or lower-income earners any good.

When the coercive power of government is used to equalize incomes, it guarantees less prosperity across the board and spreads the misery, which is one of the many reasons Marxism and socialism have failed everywhere they've been tried.

President Obama manifestly believes that government has the right, nay, the duty to take "from each according to his abilities" and distribute to each "according to his needs," or at least the needs as defined by the omniscient, omnibenevolent government. Whether you call that Marxism or euphemize it as "managed capitalism," it is a formula for ending America's unique prosperity and liberty, as there exists an inextricable connection between economic liberty and political liberty.

Never in our history have we been headed at such breakneck speed toward our own financial, political and cultural destruction. One can only pray that before it's too late, enough Democrats will come to their senses and help get this freight train under control.