The three interdependent ideals of liberty, equality, and democracy are central to America’s identity. But conservatives are allergic to them. They try to play liberty against equality in a zero-sum game (when not arguing that we have too much of both) and their hostility to democracy is well-known.

Moreover, many of our Founders thought a rough economic equality was a fundamental to a functioning republic. They had an analysis of where aristocracy came from – families with too much money. Accordingly, many of the revolution’s luminaries, like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, had no problem redistributing wealth.

As Noah Webster wrote in 1787, “An equality of property, with a necessity of alienation, constantly operating to destroy combinations of powerful families, is the very soul of a republic – While this continues, the people will inevitably possess both power and freedom; when this is lost, power departs, liberty expires, and a commonwealth will inevitably assume some other form.”

Cato wrote, “liberty can never subsist without equality.” And to that he added, “In every country and under every government, particular men may be too rich.” No doubt this is news to the Cato Institute. Thus, it is the Occupy Wall Street Movement, rather than the Tea Party, that has truly inherited the revolutionaries’ mantle.