A liberal acquaintance of mine likes to say that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization." He would, for he's a retired professor from a government university.
He didn't think this up on his own, of course. His soundbite is a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by Progressive Republican President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. Holmes also said, "I like taxes. With them I buy civilization."
Up 'til now, I had failed to come up with a retort to this challenge. But the other day, while awake at 4:00 am (that peculiar time for inspiration), I found my answer.
No. Taxes are not the price of civilization. Taxes are the Cost of Compulsion. Taxing is just what governments do, all of them, from the grandest continental power to the meanest guerrilla band taxing the villagers in its jungle hideaway.
You only have to look at the process that got the votes to pass ObamaCare 219-212 in the House of Representatives on the night of March 21, 2010 to understand the self-delusion in the idea that taxes have anything to do with civilization. Why wonder that the president won't answer the questions of Brett Baier? Why be shocked about the capitulation of Rep. Stupak? Why wonder why so many Democratic House Representatives have caved, bowing to the power that will certainly punish them for a No vote, rather than to the people, who may perhaps forgive and forget by November?
ObamaCare is about raw political power. It is about threats, deals, arm-twisting, and paying for votes with taxpayers' money. Its taxes, its alphabet soup of bureaucratic agencies, its budgetary tricks are about folding the whole vast enterprise of modern American health care under the knout of politicians and special interests. Henceforth, Americans will get health care only if they genuflect to the political gods.
RTWT at the link.
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