Andrew Klavan explains the difference between armed robbery and liberals’ favorite government function, income redistribution:



A good definition of income redistribution would be “armed robbery employing agents of the government.”

Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of income redistribution is not to redistribute income. It is to keep our progressive rulers in power by making large sectors of the public reliant on the loot they pass out to their supporters.

But there is a moral difference between voting for Democrats and robbing the local store at gunpoint. Robbing a store at gunpoint requires some decree of courage. From a primitive, law of the jungle point of view, the thief deserves what he has taken. Those who use the government to steal, whether they get the money themselves or merely get the satisfaction of seeing other people’s money coercively spent on their own socialist ideology, deserve nothing whatsoever but firm kick in the pants.

http://moonbattery.com/?p=49372

"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."
Frederic Bastiat, The Law