In defense of liberalism and taxation

On a mail­ing list with some local and not so local acquain­tances of mine, we’ve been dis­cussing pol­i­tics recently, and because I’m as left wing as Rachel Mad­dow and some of the oth­ers are as right wing as Sean Han­nity, it gets a lit­tle heated. So much so that I’d stopped read­ing it recently more than just quick skim­ming when I have a lit­tle spare time. But when I saw the quote below from a small busi­ness owner who makes about the same as the boss of Joe the Plumber, I was com­pelled to com­ment in a bit more depth.

“Even if I pay $1 more in taxes because of Obama, I can’t expect that the gov­ern­ment will use it bet­ter than I can.”

Really, sir? You can, and do, build roads and bridges, build schools, pay teach­ers and defend the secu­rity of the nation all our of your own pocket? Seems like a bit of a stretch on the mea­ger prof­its your self-​owned busi­ness pro­vides you after all your expenses.

The fact is tax­a­tion is the dues we pay to live in Amer­ica. With­out them, we’d be no bet­ter off than folks in Soma­lia or Afghanistan. We live in a soci­ety where even the worst off is still doing bet­ter than most of the peo­ple in those coun­tries, and that’s the direct result of lib­eral gov­ern­ment poli­cies that lift us ALL up rather than forc­ing every­one to fend for him­self. You know why we work­ing stiffs have week­ends at all, rather than work­ing seven days a week? Because of Unions. You know why the water that comes out of your tap is safe to drink? Because the gov­ern­ment man­dates that this be so.

If you’re really so sure you’d be bet­ter off keep­ing every­thing for your­self, I invite you to leave this land of plenty and set up shop in Afghanistan with your wife and kid. You’ll be able to keep every­thing that you make, and you won’t have to worry about lib­er­als unfairly inter­fer­ing in your liveli­hood. You won’t have safety, secu­rity, or pos­si­bly even elec­tric­ity, either, but those should be a prob­lem for a self-​starter like you, should they?

Or you could cut the BS and admit that you ben­e­fit from liv­ing in this nation, that you’ve only achieved what you have because other peo­ple sac­ri­ficed to cre­ate the oppor­tu­nity for you. That you’d be noth­ing with­out the infra­struc­ture of the nation in which you live. The core of patri­o­tism is car­ing about the other peo­ple who share soci­ety with you, and other peo­ple have been patri­otic enough to pro­vide an envi­ron­ment that allows you the oppor­tu­nity to excel. Show some appre­ci­a­tion and quit being such an incon­sid­er­ate greedy douche bag for once in your pathetic life, willya?

I doubt you’ll take my advice. I expect you’ll con­tinue to ben­e­fit from the advan­tages of being an Amer­i­can while shak­ing your tiny fist at the injus­tice of it all. Poor man, indeed.