We all saw a lot of variations on that slogan yesterday during coverage of TeaBagFest. It's a complaint as old as history itself.
Look, there are two basic choices here:
- Taxation is theft, period. Governments who tax, at no matter what level, are tyrants. They should be toppled.
- Taxation is a legitimate function for a government, though the level of taxation can be -- and always should be -- debated.
If your position is actually # 1, then you're simply an immoral idiot, and a freeloader-wannabe. You want to drive on roads paid for by others, be protected by police, firefighters, and military paid for by others, etc., and not contribute your share.
If your position is # 2, then we're just talking about the details. And the details are vitally important, of course. It's the difference between basic fairness, or lack thereof.
But most of the rightwing creeps and their dumbass followers really have no coherent argument. Are they actually saying there should be NO tax? Then move to another country, and find some patch of wilderness there. Be an island. See how that goes for you. Good luck, and good riddance.
And if they're saying that they're being taxed too much, well... under Obama, the vast majority of them are seeing no change at all in their taxes, OR even a reduction from the Bush years. Whether it fits into their paranoid fantasy of the big bad black man President picking their pockets or not, it's the truth. If they don't understand that, it's out of willful ignorance. So unless they were out front and center agitating against Bush and company the past eight years, their teabag protests are a mix of just plain stupidity, emotional hysteria, political tribalism, with (for some) a dash of good old fashioned racism for good measure.
Of course, for the economic elites in this country, taxes ARE about to go up. They're going up to the ultra-socialist levels of the Bill Clinton years, in which so many wealthy people were completely ruined by taxation, and had to sell their kidneys on the.... oh, never mind. It's all just so ridiculous. We're talking about a few percentage points of taxation on people who are incredibly well-off, beyond any measure of history -- and the Republican party immediately thinks: to hell with the U.S.A., we're leaving! During a time of war, with troops on the battlefield (<--- Remember that rhetorical gambit, GOP? It's only out of a greater sense of decency that we haven't nuked you with it. You'd have no such compunctions.)</p>
As for the deficit -- IF and WHEN any Republican, teabagger or not, can show me his detailed history of objecting to deficits under St. Ronald Reagan, St. George W. Bush, or St. Richard Cheney (quote: "Reagan proved that decifits don't matter"), maybe I'll take you seriously. Until then: piss off, you shameless hypocrites.
More seriouswise: we should always discuss and vigorously debate our tax policy in this country, locally and nationally. Taxing people's hard-earned money is a serious business. But Republicans currently have NO moral standing in this debate. The vast majority of them don't even make coherent sense, and the rest are hypocrites at a level that boggles the mind.