‘In addition to their belief in the curative powers of supply-side economics, and their desire to reward their donor base, conservatives consider redistribution a monstrous moral evil. Tax cuts represent a victory in a cause far larger than squeezing out a couple tenths of a percent of economic growth or another private jet for their rich friends. This belief pops up when wealthy conservatives compare progressive taxation to the Nazi persecution of the Jews — a belief they share, despite the inevitable backlash, with surprising frequency. In 2002, Senator Phil Gramm called a policy to tax capital gains by people who renounce U.S. citizenship something “right out of Nazi Germany.” In 2010, Stephen Schwarzman described a proposal to raise taxes on private equity firms as “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” In 2014, Ken Langone remarked on plans to raise taxes on the rich, “If you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany.” That same year, Tom Perkins said, “The parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the “rich.”” What are they telling us with these comments? They are revealing that there is something more than dollars and sense at stake. They believe a political system that allows the majority to vote themselves a raise by taxing a minority is a form of persecution. Economic libertarianism is the quality that most sharply distinguishes the modern Republican Party from conservative parties in other democracies. Economic libertarians consider the free market to be the sole fair arbiter of the distribution of wealth. If I have earned 100 times the average wage through acts of capitalism between consenting adults, the theory goes, then I am entitled to keep it. For hard-core economic libertarians, this absolute right to property supersedes all other rights.’