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Whether there ever was a Robin Hood, and whether he ever was the
Earl of Lockesley in feudal times or not, his legend was originally about
his "taking BACK from the taxers and giving BACK to the taxees" -- totally
virtuous endeavors, in my opinion. Yet this legend has been perverted
over and over again by demagogues and their followers to justify their
own criminality by claiming that this possibly-nonexistent legend hero's
motive was to recklessly steal from ANY of the rich to give to any of the
poor. This is nowhere near virtuous. On the contrary, I submit
that it's most definitely depraved and totally vicious.
Feudalism was a politico-socio-economic system made up primarily of "givers" and "takers," (serfs and landlords, or taxees and taxers). In feudal times, the rich and the government were one and the same, and the middle (merchant and trader) class was relatively small, although a few rare traders became relatively wealthy by ancient standards (but still well below the "poverty line" by today's). So attempting to use the legend of Robin Hood in ancient times as an example for govenment policies to follow in modern times is worse than absurd -- much worse.
As Prof. Tibor R. Machan says, "Government cannot-yes, literally, cannot-be compassionate toward people with other people’s money. You, I, our friends and neighbors can be compassionate, in the sense that we can consider some people’s misfortune, even bad choices, and reach out to them with our help, be this money or some service we could offer. That’s compassion. But when we see such misfortune and go out to rob a neighbor and hand over the loot to those in need, that isn’t compassion, conservative, liberal or any other kind! It is criminal-maybe we ought to dub it “criminal ‘compassion’.”! -- here*
"There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden
to an individual, but permitted to a mob." -- Ayn
Rand
"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings,
collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of
them separately." -- Thomas Jefferson
"We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot
morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do."
-- Auberon Herbert
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything
which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." -- John Locke
"The policy of seeking values from human beings by means of force,
when practiced by an individual, is called crime. When practiced by a government,
it is called statism
... ." -- Nathaniel Branden
HERE
*http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/machan/machan22.html
