It’s still that time of year, as many American continue their
recovery from the traumas associated with Tax Day. What makes
recovery doubly infuriating is that each year some liberal pundit
or other will subject us to a lecture about how grateful we should
be for the opportunity to pay our taxes. This year we received a
two-fer: both Washington Post columnist E.J.
Dionne Jr. and the Des Moines Register
editorial board. With some variation, the lectures usually
adhere to the following template:
1. Distort the position of conservatives.
According to the Register:
Victorious U.S. forces are turning their attention to
creating a new government in Iraq.
Hey, wait a minute. Why bother?
What does Iraq need with a government? As Ronald Reagan
famously said, “Government is not the answer to your problem.
Government is the problem.”
Government is evil. Iraq would be better off without
one.
No, we’re in favor low taxes and limited government. Our
argument isn’t with the existence of government; it’s with
the size. Government currently does way too much and, as a
result, the tax burden is too high.
2. Indulge in a pathetic reductio ad absurdum.
Again, the Register:
If tax cuts are good for the economy, it follows that having
no taxes would be even better.
That’s like saying since losing weight is good, being anorexic
is great. Just as individuals have an ideal weight, government can
impose an ideal tax burden. Currently, though, government is
bloated and needs to be put on a diet of tax cuts.
3. Give a condescending reminder of the importance of
government.
According to Dionne:
At this time of year, I am tempted to pick out the two dozen
loudest anti-tax propagandists and send them a copy of one of the
most important volumes of the last decade. In “The Cost of Rights:
Why Liberty Depends on Taxes,” published in 1999, law professors
Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein do a brilliant demolition job on
the idea that taxes are inimical to freedom.
Holmes and Sunstein are not Marxists. They vigorously defend
property rights and the value of a society that “encourages
personal initiative, social cooperation and self-improvement.” But
they also note that public programs commonly described as
“redistributive” are essential to the social stability on which
property owners depend. Welfare rights, they argue, “compensate the
indigent for receiving less value than the rich from the rights
ostensibly guaranteed equally to all Americans.” And, especially in
the case of education, government expenditures promote both
initiative and self-improvement.
I doubt that anyone who wrote a big check to the government
in recent days will suddenly feel wonderful after contemplating how
much the rights we enjoy depend on the taxes we pay. But they might
at least consider that the old saw “freedom isn’t free” applies at
least as much to paying taxes as it does to the other ways in which
we protect and defend our liberties.
The welfare system compensates the indigent? The lesson of
welfare reform appears to be that the welfare system worked to keep
them indigent, preventing them from getting good “value” from their
rights. Welfare is, rather, an example of government creating
social instability.
More importantly, this argument is misleading because it focuses
only on those government functions which are, arguably, essential.
It ignores how much government we actually have. This is a link to a Louisiana State
University website that provides a list of government agencies,
boards, and commissions. There are more than 1,300, and that’s just
the federal government! While conservatives would not argue the
social benefits of a military, schools, or roads, we are on solid
ground in questioning the merits of the Architectural and
Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, the Dairy, Livestock and
Poultry Division, or the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and
Education.
This year’s version of lecture had an addition to the
template:
4. Use Iraq as an example.
According to the Register:
Oh, maybe Iraq would need a little government. Just
enough to prevent looting, keep the electricity and the water
running, rebuild the roads, etc.
And Dionne:
If you think government is useless, evil and unnecessary,
ponder those pictures of looters in Iraq ransacking homes, hotels,
even hospitals. Feel for that sobbing official of the National
Museum of Antiquities, aghast at the destruction of irreplaceable
historical artifacts by an angry mob.
It’s telling that one of the first things some liberals see when
they look at Iraq is a reason to pay our taxes. One might look at
the secret police, the torture chambers, and the imprisoned
children in Iraq and see a powerful warning about the tyrannical
potential of government. One might even consider ways to limit its
power. But not, apparently, liberals still wedded to the idea of
government as a tool to cure all of society’s ills.
Now that April 15, 2003, has passed it will be nearly a year
before most Americans have to worry about paying their taxes again.
It will, fortunately, also be a year before we have to endure
another liberal lecture about how we should be happy about paying
taxes.
