'Patriotic' taxes

Vice President Joe Biden insists rich folk should "be patriotic" and agree to pay higher and higher levels of income taxes (forgetting, evidently, that rich folk pay most of the income taxes already).

Is it patriotic for a homeowner to leave her house unlocked so burglars can steal her TV?

On Wednesday, CNN's Paul Begala wrote a column describing how "April 15 is the one day a year when our country asks something of us -- or at least the vast majority of us." Begala called tax day "Patriots Day." As if "our government" and "our country" meant the same thing.

"Freedom isn't free," Begala pointed out later in his commentary, as if paying taxes would or could purchase freedom. Freedom and peace cannot be bought; they can only be taken and protected by force. Bribing the immoral might convince them to leave you alone, for a little while. But for as long as they think they can get something from you, they will consider coming to take it.



Some things (e.g. roads) the government was created to provide. It does so fairly well and it needs money to do so; the necessity of taxes is beyond dispute. But the idea that it's "patriotic" to approve of our current system, or even one that will take much more money from those who earned it, is beneath contempt.

Congressmen receive more money today than ever before as compensation for their services; are they doing better now than at any time in American history? This year we will spend more on public education than ever before; are our schools second to no previous time? More tax money has been spent in the past year on bailing out banks and car companies than any other year for the last 200; are those banks and car companies performing better today than they were during every other year for the last 200?

More often than is morally acceptable, tax money goes to enrich a lazy bureaucrat, convene a worthless commission or comfort someone who does not deserve to be on a public payroll.

In way too many cases, more tax money does not mean a better quality of life or a better government, it just means poorer citizens.

There is nothing patriotic about dumping more money down the rat-hole of bad government.