Perhaps the greatest crime ever committed by the American left is the equivocation of freedom and bondage. And it couldn’t be more clear than in Matt Stoller’s column in praise of taxation, which appeared on Monday at MyDD. The Agitator is surprised that people actually believe this sort of thing. So am I.
The column is not only factually incorrect, it is also riddled with ad hominems and commits the No True Scotsman fallacy from ambiguity, among others. So you might wonder why I’d even bother addressing his drivel. Because it’s infuriating:
I just paid my taxes, and I have to say, I always take pride when I do so….The tax burden we face is a very small price to pay for the privilege of taking responsibility for our own freedom and our own society…I am proud to pay taxes because I take pride in America, and paying some tiny burden to keep our society running is an extremely small price to pay for being able to call myself an American citizen
Unfuckingbelievable!
It is disingenuous, at the very least, for Stoller to maintain that the tax burden price we pay for government is “small.” First and foremost, “small” is a relative term, only meaningful in comparison to something else. So the tax burden is small – compared to what? There exists no objectively determined market price for government-provided goods or services, to which we could compare the government prices and make a subjective relative statement. No comparison is even possible, which is convenient, because Stoller omits any attempt at demonstrating how he determines the “price” is small, he just returns to name calling.
What is clear though, is that the tax burden price we pay for government is enormous, compared to the rest of our expenses. The average American spends more time working to pay off his various “small” tax burdens, than he spends paying for his housing, food, and recreation, combined! (H/T Trav.is for the chart, from taxfoundation.org)
He also says that the “tax code is the DNA of our nation’s moral compass,” which is curious and also deeply troubling. Curious, because the nation seemed to get along fine for 120 years or so without it, and deeply troubling because morality isn’t guided by force and punishment.
And what’s this nonsense about “the privilege of taking responsibility for our own freedom…”? The last time I checked, responsibility for oneself is not a privilege. It’s not a privilege if it’s a positive obligation, and if it’s a positive obligation, it’s not freedom. Freedom cannot be imposed at gunpoint, and it cannot be granted through bondage. Only individuals may be possessed of freedom. Words like “our” and “society” muddy the thought process for most, though. The abstract contstruct, “us,” requires the existence of (at least) a “you” and a “me.” If I don’t have freedom, and you don’t have freedom, then we don’t have freedom.
