Steven Benen’s really boring response to my “I don’t want to pay it” post earlier today seems to be eliciting some remarkably stupid email.
Basically he says I can work less or leave the country. Well, I’m not going to leave the country because I love it so. As for the suggestion that people who don’t want to pay all the extra taxes coming down the pike to pay for Obama’s enormous expansion of the government should simply work less, maybe if he squints really hard he’ll see why some of Barack Obama’s policies will be counter-productive.
Oh, as for the email:
“America – love it or leave it!”
And:
You don’t want to enlist and serve your country and now you don’t want to pay US taxes. Why not relocate to another country? And BTW, good riddance! You smug son of a bitch!
And:
You stupid F*** I always knew you conservatives loved money and hated your country. Oh, and don’t think we can’t tell you don’t want your money spent on black people.
Me: As for the saner folk who seemed to have misunderstood my point, let me just clarify. We are being deluged with talk about how this is an exciting new era, that this is hope and change and an exciting blah, blah, blah. During the campaign, Joe Biden told us that supporting higher taxes is both a patriotic duty and a religious-moral obligation (it’s neither and Biden’s argument was typically dim). Barack Obama says this is all about a new era of responsibility and all that jazz.
Well, I don’t buy any of it. This is simply warmed over, recycled, big government liberalism being inflicted on us in a time of crisis. It’s not exciting or innovative and supporting it doesn’t make you morally superior or more responsible. It just means you’re eager to spend other peoples’ money on programs and schemes that are more likely than not going to result in making the country less prosperous. I will pay my taxes — unlike Barack Obama’s treasury secretary — because that’s the law and the social contract. But, I don’t have to celebrate it and I don’t have to enjoy it. Saying I don’t want to pay higher taxes for bigger government doesn’t make me less patriotic, it makes me conservative and, I would argue, more reasonable.