Billionaire capitalist titan David Koch passed away last month following a 27-year bout with prostate cancer. His legacy was a controversial one, due to his powerful financial network promoting a principled libertarian worldview that had a tendency to press people's buttons all across the volatile political spectrum.
David, alongside his brother Charles, became the villains of the tea party era as their groups such as the Cato Institute and Americans for Prosperity gained grassroots support across the United States as limited government swelled in popularity for a short time. It was easy for leftists, lost in the idolatry of their deity Barack Obama, to envision the Koch Brothers as the modern-aged robber barons using their ill-gotten gains to stand in the way of their Dear Leader's electoral mandate of sweeping change.
However, their actual legacy is a bit different. While the Koch brothers certainly curried favor in the Washington D.C. swamp with great effectiveness funding establishment Republican politicians to make sure favorable policies were put in place to secure their business interests, they also funded causes that are more frequently associated with progressivism. The Koch network has pushed homosexual marriage, criminal justice reform, job opportunities for felons, legalization of drugs, and open borders - and done so well before it became politically expedient to do so.
The Koch brothers have been demonized by Republicans in recent years for their progressive streak, as they have feuded with President Trump over his various 'America First' initiatives. Regardless of what anyone may think of David's political beliefs, he showed a unique willingness to take a stunning amount of partisan flak to defend his principles. Stopping impediments to world trade, preventing interdictions against illegal drugs, and curtailing border enforcement measures made them pariahs on the Right while opposing spending increases, tax hikes, gun freedom, and environmental regulation made them villains to the Left.
Still, despite plenty of disagreements, only one polarized political faction spewed vicious personal attacks against David following his death - and that is the Left.
“When a bad person dies they don't suddenly become a saint. Their legacy of destruction and pain doesn't just float away. David Koch is dead, we have to deal with the fallout of his villainy for hundreds of years,” wrote progressive news writer Oliver Willis in a Tweet.
Willis then compared Koch to some of history's most reviled mass murderers by writing: "I hope the conservatives saying that in death someone deserves grace no matter what they did also wept on the days when bin laden and McVeigh died, right?"
"He economically enslaved thousands; ruined the lives of many more through propaganda and exploitation; elevated the rich; and fought to force millions into poverty. He is the worst," wrote freelance journalist Jules Suzdaltsev in a tweet.
"David Koch was a villain who devoted his wealth to further enrich himself and his fellow plutocrats while spinning us all toward environmental doom. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but if there is one, I hope his soul suffers for eternity," tweeted Jordan Weissman, a public policy and economics writer for Slate.
"They poisoned our politics to pollute our planet. The Koch name should be infamous," wrote Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in a tweet.
"Yesterday David Koch of the zillionaire Koch brothers died...of prostate cancer. I guess I’m going to have to re-evaluate my low opinion of prostate cancer," left-wing comedian Bill Maher said on his HBO talk show.
"F**k him. The Amazon is burning up. I'm glad he's dead and I hope the end was painful," he added.
This overwhelming response of hate and disgust from the Left to David Koch's death should be an eye-opener for conservatives and libertarians who want to appease them. Anyone who wants to get in the way of their ruthless power-seeking deserves the most painful of deaths, in their minds, and as the upright and sacrosanct crusaders for virtue, they are morally justified to make it so by any means necessary. The Left holds as much murderous contempt for all libertarian activists as they do the Koch brothers, whether they are willing to admit it or not. Conservatives, too, can become gaslighted into doing the bidding of the Left, even while generally understanding their motives. Too frequently conservatives like Ben Shapiro fall prey to the liberal outrage ecosystem buoyed by the fake news media and, desperate to protect their status and prestige, hurt their own cause immeasurably.
The Koch network, to its great discredit, is the worst offender when it comes to dancing to the beat of their enemy. As 42-year-old Chase Koch, son of Charles, takes power over the network, it is becoming a vessel to promote the dominance of leftism. The network is openly embracing social justice under the "Stand Together" banner, using philanthropy to advance liberal humanitarian causes. It even signed onto a thought control summit this year among the likes of the Soros Fund and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) lobbying Big Tech to advance censorship policies that are an existential threat to digital free speech. The Koch network is now directly sponsoring the cultural revolution that, if left unimpeded, will stomp out the market system on a global basis.
The blind spot of the Koch legacy is being exacerbated by the next generation of their family's leadership. David and his brother Charles may have been principled, but they failed to adequately address the main threat to their cosmopolitan vision of a world liberated from government shackles. By refusing to devote resources toward combating leftism, they unwittingly put the future of liberty in grave danger. These people want capitalism snuffed out, and mountains of corpses are just a means to an end for their warped agenda, as they have shown regularly throughout history. Let the vitriolic and inhumane response to David's passing be a long-lasting lesson that the leftist scourge must be soundly defeated before a free society can flourish.