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]

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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