[From the CV Spectator of 4/16/2009]This week marks an annual milestone – April 15 – that is truly worth celebrating. In fact, it should be a national holiday.
Over the years, it has become popular at all points along the political spectrum to lament the deadline for submitting federal and state tax returns as a day of infamy. But, as President Obama said in his inaugural address, “the time has come to set aside childish things.”
Among these childish things is the notion, common among pacifists, that the federal income tax is a useful mechanism for expressing outrage over the horrors of war.
Only a handful of folks express that outrage by refusing to pay some or all of their income taxes on the ground that they support the Pentagon. But these people tend to be held up as heroes in places like the Hanover Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (a/k/a the Quakers) , of which I happen to be a member.
An earnest-looking woman arose in Hanover Monthly Meeting one day to proclaim herself a tax resister and to express delight over sitting, for once, among people who understood and agreed with her. Not wanting to ruin her day, or mine, I said nothing.
On a more mean-spirited day, I would have upbraided her for her exquisite self-indulgence. It is probably comforting for a pacifist – perhaps even worth the extraordinary hassle – to know that none of one’s dollars are supporting armaments or armies.
The problem is that this behavior does absolutely nothing to make the world any more peaceful. In fact, it likely has the opposite effect, by engendering hostility among those who pay their taxes because they believe, as Oliver Wendell Holmes famously observed, that in so doing they are buying civilization.
Imagine if every shareholder of Exxon-Mobil had decided this year to withhold their federal taxes on the ground that a big and growing portion of this levy goes to support efforts to combat climate change.
The shareholders might observe that they simply don’t believe in climate change. Pick your vice president: Al Gore is to these misguided people as Dick Cheney is to pacifists.
The “drill baby, drill” crowd could couch its position in religious terms, arguing that God called them to exercise dominion over Earth’s resources by extracting and then using as much oil as possible. Though ludicrous, such assertions cannot be conclusively disproven.
Somewhat more plausibly, those with moral stances against stem cell research or sexuality education or aid to Israel could insist that, like the pacifist at Hanover Monthly Meeting, they have the right to withhold their federal taxes for reasons of principle.
Assuming a willingness among these social conservatives to endure the penalties, pacifists and other liberals would have no countervailing argument because they venerate those among their own group who indulge in the exact same behavior.
Ironically, this very point underlies the Peace Testimony of the Religious Society of Friends, as formulated in 1660 by the earliest Quaker, George Fox.
In this fabled communication to King Charles II, Fox said that Friends “deny all outward wars and strife” because their spiritual guide “is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil and again to move unto it.” If war is always bad, then tax resistance cannot sometimes be bad and sometimes good.
This is not to decry pacifism, or to excuse the violence and horror of war. My point is that the cause of peace is truly advanced through engagement, both at the macro and micro levels. President Obama should be talking to Iran. Travel should be permitted to Cuba.
And we, each of us, should also be talking to our neighbors – even the ones we don’t like. If the people on my street, and yours, can’t get along then the world truly is condemned to strife and violence.
That’s my message to my friends who stand on the Ledyard Bridge holding peace signs and waving at the passing motorists who, sometimes, give them the finger. What would it take to have an actual conversation with those digit-wielding SUV owners?
And to all, best wishes for further prosperity when next April 15 comes around. Civilization is a good thing; let’s buy more of it.
Over the years, it has become popular at all points along the political spectrum to lament the deadline for submitting federal and state tax returns as a day of infamy. But, as President Obama said in his inaugural address, “the time has come to set aside childish things.”
Among these childish things is the notion, common among pacifists, that the federal income tax is a useful mechanism for expressing outrage over the horrors of war.
Only a handful of folks express that outrage by refusing to pay some or all of their income taxes on the ground that they support the Pentagon. But these people tend to be held up as heroes in places like the Hanover Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (a/k/a the Quakers) , of which I happen to be a member.
An earnest-looking woman arose in Hanover Monthly Meeting one day to proclaim herself a tax resister and to express delight over sitting, for once, among people who understood and agreed with her. Not wanting to ruin her day, or mine, I said nothing.
On a more mean-spirited day, I would have upbraided her for her exquisite self-indulgence. It is probably comforting for a pacifist – perhaps even worth the extraordinary hassle – to know that none of one’s dollars are supporting armaments or armies.
The problem is that this behavior does absolutely nothing to make the world any more peaceful. In fact, it likely has the opposite effect, by engendering hostility among those who pay their taxes because they believe, as Oliver Wendell Holmes famously observed, that in so doing they are buying civilization.
Imagine if every shareholder of Exxon-Mobil had decided this year to withhold their federal taxes on the ground that a big and growing portion of this levy goes to support efforts to combat climate change.
The shareholders might observe that they simply don’t believe in climate change. Pick your vice president: Al Gore is to these misguided people as Dick Cheney is to pacifists.
The “drill baby, drill” crowd could couch its position in religious terms, arguing that God called them to exercise dominion over Earth’s resources by extracting and then using as much oil as possible. Though ludicrous, such assertions cannot be conclusively disproven.
Somewhat more plausibly, those with moral stances against stem cell research or sexuality education or aid to Israel could insist that, like the pacifist at Hanover Monthly Meeting, they have the right to withhold their federal taxes for reasons of principle.
Assuming a willingness among these social conservatives to endure the penalties, pacifists and other liberals would have no countervailing argument because they venerate those among their own group who indulge in the exact same behavior.
Ironically, this very point underlies the Peace Testimony of the Religious Society of Friends, as formulated in 1660 by the earliest Quaker, George Fox.
In this fabled communication to King Charles II, Fox said that Friends “deny all outward wars and strife” because their spiritual guide “is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil and again to move unto it.” If war is always bad, then tax resistance cannot sometimes be bad and sometimes good.
This is not to decry pacifism, or to excuse the violence and horror of war. My point is that the cause of peace is truly advanced through engagement, both at the macro and micro levels. President Obama should be talking to Iran. Travel should be permitted to Cuba.
And we, each of us, should also be talking to our neighbors – even the ones we don’t like. If the people on my street, and yours, can’t get along then the world truly is condemned to strife and violence.
That’s my message to my friends who stand on the Ledyard Bridge holding peace signs and waving at the passing motorists who, sometimes, give them the finger. What would it take to have an actual conversation with those digit-wielding SUV owners?
And to all, best wishes for further prosperity when next April 15 comes around. Civilization is a good thing; let’s buy more of it.
1 comments:
YAY!
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