“Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

Guy Fawkes tried to blow the King and Parliament sky-high in 1605. Four centuries later, a masked avenger in a Fawkes mask detonates London’s Old Bailey while Tchaikovsky blares. That’s the opening of V for Vendetta, the graphic-novel-turned-movie that every blue-check anarchist quotes when he wants to feel dangerous without leaving Starbucks. In another future London, Big Brother’s telescreen glows in Airstrip One, watching Winston Smith scrawl “Down with Big Brother” in a diary he knows will get him vaporized.

V for Vendetta and 1984. The two sacred texts of left-wing dystopia.

Both stories are slick, both are quotable, and both are—there is no better word for it —cartoons. Not because the cinematography is garish (though the Wachowskis did lean hard into slo-mo capes), but because their villains are evil the way Saturday-morning bad guys are evil: they want to rule the world because ruling the world is neat. No further explanation required. The High Chancellor in V and the Party in 1984 don’t pocket a dime. They don’t yacht in the Maldives. They don’t even have Swiss bank accounts. They just love boots stomping faces—forever.

Real tyrants, by contrast, love boots only insofar as boots keep the tribute flowing. If you think Joe Stalin lived in a shabby apartment shared with another family, you’re clueless. He lived in opulence while his subjects starved, at a country villa in Sochi during the summer. The Maduro family is Venezuela’s richest. Ditto for all the real tyrants of history going all the way back to antiquity.

Yet peruse left wing dystopian novels and films and you will search in vain for a single dollar changing hands. In V for Vendetta the Sutler regime rounds up gays, Muslims, and leftists, but no reference is made to taxation. In 1984, O’Brien seems to enjoy a few privileges as an inner party member, but there is no indication he entered government service a man of modest means and will die a millionaire, like most members of Congress. Instead, he lectures Winston about power being an end in itself, and the camera nods solemnly, as if this were profound rather than the sort of thing a trust-fund sophomore says after his third bong hit.

Why this blind spot? Because the left-wing mind has already surrendered the moral high ground on property. If you believe a 39.6% marginal rate is “paying your fair share,” and that “fair” is whatever the IRS says on April 15, then of course you can’t imagine confiscation as the original sin of tyranny. To you, taxation is noble, especially if done more to someone else. Those who pay the least taxes – or whose income is derived solely from taxes - are always quick to insist “the rich” (anyone who earns a dollar more than they do) pay more.
 

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? 

 Tom