Bewildered

[fpb]

One of the ways in which Americans, or at least Republicans, simply do not seem to live on the same planet as the rest of us, is shown by the fury with which the whole Republican party has attacked Joe Biden for saying that paying tax - sorry: for the rich to pay more tax - could be regarded as patriotic. The poor man has not said one thing - not his celebrated plagiarism of Neil Kinnock, not his bizarre opinions on Iran or Iraq, not his fourteen great and small proven misstatements in the vice-presidential debate alone - on which bloggerdom and campaign alike have fallen with half the ferocity, the repeated outrage, the pretend irony and real fury with which they have handled what should be a statement of the obvious. Of course paying tax is patriotic; just as hiding your profits in Third World holes with no taxation is unpatriotic and anti-national. Of course paying tax is patriotic; it is one of the basic duties of any citizen, one of the bonds that bind citizen and country, citizen and state, and entitle the citizen to make demands of the state and be heard. Of course paying tax is patriotic: it pays for the army that defends you, the police force that protects you, the courts that enforce your rights and the bureaucracy that records them (as well as, in countries that have one, the health service that defends your health). Of course paying tax is patriotic; can you conceive of a patriot - I am not speaking to the Americans, for evidently they can - can you conceive of a patriot who would want his government to be feeble, penniless, incapable of performing its basic duties?

The Republicans have made this one of the core elements of their message. When Sarah Palin directly attacked Obama for his closer relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers (surely a powerful enough message in itself), she bathetically capped it with a reminder that "these are the people who think that paying more tax is patriotic". As if, you know, asking people to pay more tax were not only on the same level as being acquainted with bomb-throwers, but actually explained and justified it. And if you think that this is only Palin, you have not been following the conservative blogosphere.

In any other country in the world this would be suicide: even in sister English-speaking countries such as Britain or Australia, which share American attitudes to some degree, this continuous hammering at the patriotism of not paying more tax would expose the party to the answer that their only patriotism resides evidently in their wallet, that they stop being patriotic the moment they have to pay a penny extra for it. Such an answer would be popular and probably reach the majority; it would rouse both hilarity and contempt. Yet, in America, the immensely clever and far-sighted McCain campaign, that has not put a foot wrong yet, clearly expects this to be a successful point, and that hilarity and contempt will only flow the other way.

This is one of those moments where I feel helpless before American attitudes. No matter how much I work at it, I simply do not understand them. I do not know whether the McCain campaign has calculated correctly, and whether the majority of Americans will react negatively to Biden's point - which was about the richer part of the community anyway - and positively to Republican mockery; or whether the reaction will be as it is in most other nations, that from time to time it may be necessary to raise tax, and that if it really is necessary, then it is patriotic to pay it (and in any case profoundly unpatriotic to set up fake trust funds in the Cayman Islands or the like). But I would say that the reaction to this will tell us a lot.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That is roughly as true as that the Civil War was about States' Rights. Let us see what the original signers complained of:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. (FPB notes: this is the first apparent allusion to taxation, and even so very unclear. Hardly suggests that it mattered much to the signers as opposed to George III's outrages against their legislative and administrative powers!

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

- For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

- For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

- For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

- For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: (FPB notes: took you long enough, gentlemen! And yet this supposedly important point comes only as a minor part of the complaint against the establishment of military law.)

- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

- For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

- For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

- For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

Leaving aside the historical comparison, I also would say that this is close to it. I would agree with the bare statement that paying taxes is indeed patriotic, in the sense of supporting the government's performance of its basic duties - the police, the courts, national defense, etc., etc.

Nevertheless, I submit that in the context of a government that sees fit to perform not only its basic duties but also its extended duties, and its unconstitutional duties that it just made up; and is both wastefully inefficient in doing so, and is failing in delivering on its promises in many areas (for example, public education) despite spending vast sums of money on them; and, last and most of all, profligately spends the taxes it receives now on subsidies and handouts for its friends (vide. the bailout bill that ballooned from 3 pages to 422 pages of handouts for children's wooden arrow makers, etc.)...

Well, I think it's entirely understandable if people read a politician's use of "it is patriotic to pay taxes" as a truth used to cover a political reality much closer to "If you have any wealth, shut up and be mulcted. We have our friends to pay off."

[fpb.livejournal.com]

IN that case, you take part in the political process to denounce abuses and, if possible, drag abusers before the courts. You do not declare yourself independent of your own government for tax purposes (though for no others, since if the government declared the protection of police and courts withdrawn from you in reciprocation, you would indubitably scream blue murder). Since no government is ever going to do everything exactly as every citizen wishes it, to attack the duty to pay tax every time you disagree with what the government is doing is the same as to write yourself a blank permit not to pay tax any time you like. Citizenship is a serious business, and so is duty, but it surprises me that supposed conservatives should claim the right to redefine either in their own favour.

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

Who's said anything about doing that? All most people making this point are doing is noting that, as so often happens, the mantle of virtue is draping a gang of thieves, and people should not be fooled by it.

Anyway, conservatives would point out the duties run both ways, and if one side abrogates their part of the bargain, then the other side is likewise freed of their obligation.

Libertarians, and at least some conservatives, would also point out that deferring to an unconditional duty to pay whatever tax a democratic government demands is essentially to say that anyone's property is at the mercy of any 51% group that conceives a desire for it, and that this is both morally and pragmatically wrong.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Which ignores the point I just made, that is that it is not up to you - at least, not to you alone - to decide that what the government does is right or wrong. Civic obligations are not negotiable at the pleasure of every citizen. No country can exist for two minutes in which such a berserk, upside-down notion of duty were applied for one second.

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

Which ignores the point I just made, that is that it is not up to you - at least, not to you alone - to decide that what the government does is right or wrong.

Rather, I would disagree with that point. I would say that it is necessary that individuals decide whether what the government does is right or wrong, because the ability of the minority to either walk out by emigrating, or simply to refuse consent to intolerable impositions, either in toto or by raising compliance costs to an impractical level, is a valuable restraint on a democracy acting as a mere majoritarian tyranny.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That is the morality of the assassin. You talk as though property were something natural and the state were something artificial. In real life, the very opposite is the case: it is the state that certifies and indeed creates property. Without the state, there would be nothing but mutual violence, and no property would be safe. What makes property stable is the law that defines it, the office that records it, the police that protects it, and the courts that avenge it. And if you even begin to think sensibly in this area, you should realize that taxation is not an assault on property, but a condition of it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As for what I said about the morality of the assassin, tell me, is there anything about resisting intolerable impositions that John Wilkes Booth, Leon Csogolcz, GAetano Bresci, Gavilo Princip, Nahuram Godse, Lee Oswald, or Yigal Amir would disagree with?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

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