When I hear how much Republicans, the Tea Party and certain Fox News talking heads cry out against welfare, unions, and universal health care on the  grounds that Americans need to work for what they get, I begin to wonder about something.  When I hear this same mob embrace the wisdom of the founders  of our Constitution, I wonder even more.

According to Republicans, giving a citizen something for nothing creates an immoral individual and a weak America, transferring wealth from the hard working responsible citizens to the lazy "entitlement class".   They say this is wrong.  I tend to agree, so  I wonder why the aforementioned knuckle dragging neocons are not up in arms and wildly against efforts to lower or eliminate our nation's estate tax?  Why are such well known Republicans like Gingrich, Palin, Huckabee and the rest insisting on repealing what they call the "Death Tax"?

 When a person dies and leaves behind an estate worth several million or even billions of dollars, can we honestly think that the children of that individual worked hard enough to claim ownership of that estate?  Or, is it more along the lines that the offspring of that individual feel entitled to that wealth by simple association and no expectation of labor is required?  

Where does wealth come from?  What creates it?  Who owns the wealth when the person who owned it is dead?  Is anyone entitled to it?  Let's ask the founders.  In particular, let's see what Benjamin Franklin wrote 1783  to Robert Morris, the Superintendent of Finance under Pres. George Washington: 

"All property except that needed by individuals for survival is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition."

And what about Jefferson?  What did Thomas Jefferson say about the inheritance of wealth?

"I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;" that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society."

And what does the Tea Party say about the estate tax?  

The death tax, an immoral "vampire tax" that sucks the blood from the dead, ruins family businesses and double taxes savings that were accumulated over a lifetime. 

Oh my!  The Tea Party is at odds with Jefferson and Franklin.  If I were Glenn Beck this would be the time that I would walk to the blackboard and begin to draw analogies between the Tea Party and.............Hitler.  (it's always Hitler)  

 So once again, here is why I refer to myself as The Feral Conservative.  Like our founding fathers, I am outraged at great disparities of wealth that stem from the type of hereditary political and economic power that we see in the  present with the Koch brothers, the Bush family, the Kennedy family and so many more examples of too much power in the hands of the few.  

So why is the Tea Party not opposed to the estate tax?  The answer is simple if one follows the money.  The Tea Party receives significant funding (through indirect but easy to follow lines) from people like the Koch family.  

The Tea Party seems quite supportive of the transfer wealth from the hard working to the idle entitled if the idle entitled are the wealthy benefactors of the Tea Party.  So it's not really about the Constitution, the founding fathers, our freedoms, or anything else that they put up as a smoke screen.  It's about the wealth of our nation and the wealthy people who claim that they are entitled to all of it – even though the writings of the founders say that all of us, not just the wealthy elite, are entitled to it as Americans.