Obama is talking about ‘spreading the wealth around’.

The deep problem with that idea is that it is not so easy to spread the energy, creativity, persistence, ambition and willingness to take risks and to make sacrifices which together combine to create the wealth in the first place.

So there needs to be an understanding – explicit or implicit – between those who create the ‘surplus’ wealth now up for spreading and those who stand to get after the spreading ends more than they put in.

Because if there is no reasonable understanding, the whole exercise is little more than state-run looting.

And, sooner or later, those who work hard and make sacrifices to create all that wealth will be so dispirited or disillusioned or angry that they stop trying. Or even just … disappear.

And thus society will tend to become poorer and poorer.

In our despair, let’s recall the closing lines one of the greatest speeches in the history of civilisation:

Because: freedom is not empowerment.

Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered.

Freedom is not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on Welfare get, and how free are they?

And freedom is not an endlessly expanding list of rights. The right to education, the right to health care, the right to food and housing – that is not freedom, that is dependency.

And those are not rights, those are the rations of slavery; they are hay and a barn for human cattle.