I have reread yesterday’s post (December 13th, 2011).
Let me summarize it. I wrote
that an Obama-Clinton ticket might prove a good combination. But I also wrote that
no one could know whether or not Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have been a better President than President Obama. And I said that
members of the Tea Party and hardline Republicans systematically oppose proposals brought before by President Obama, which is unacceptable.
In other words, anti-tax extremism being at the centre of the current debate, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would also have had difficulty ensuring the debt is paid without making substantial cuts in essential areas such as social programmes.
Yet, I think an Obama-Clinton ticket is a very good idea.
However, I may not have seemed very kind to the electorate. Those Republican members of Congress who say ‘no’ systematically to proposals put before them by President Obama were elected by the people.
But it would be my opinion these voters were probably blinded by the candidates who needed their votes. As soon as President Obama was elected into office, Sarah Palin was telling Americans that if the health-care reforms the President wanted to put into place were signed into law, grandmothers would be killed. Grandmothers were not about to be killed, but panic-mongering is very effective.
In other words, I hope I didn’t offend anyone. And if I did, I apologize.
I want to make very sure my readers know why I oppose anti-tax extremism. The answer is simple. I do not think the poor and the middle-class should foot the entire bill, i.e. repay the debt incurred by a previous Republican administration. It would not be just.
* * *
But, let me add that, if united by a common purpose, Americans do what needs to be done. When Europeans were fighting a demented dictator: Hitler, Americans and Canadians gave their lives to liberate Europe. During the year I lived in Normandy, I saw the vast fields of little white crosses and marvelled at the courage Americans had shown. Not to mention that having liberated Europe, they went on to rebuild it. Remember the Marshall Plan.
There are so many dimensions to reality and so many shades to every colour, that it is dangerous to allow oneself to be dogmatically one-sided.
Sally Kohn: “paid foot the bill”
On November 30, 2011, Sally Kohn(CNN) wrote: “Consider, for instance, that the Republican austerity plan for the United States economy, advanced by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee. About two thirds of the ‘savings’ he outlines comes from proposals to slash food stamps, Medicare and Social Security. But three fourths of that money would go not to paying down our government’s deficit but to giving bigger and bigger tax breaks to the rich.”
First, allow me to repeat the end of my quotation:
[b]ut three fourths of that money would go not to paying down our government’s deficit but to giving bigger and bigger tax breaks to the rich.
In other words, the United States
accrued an enormous debt under a Republican administration, and
supporters of the Republican Party would gain from an austerity plan. Furthermore,
the debt incurred under a Republican administration would not be paid (the deficit would not be lowered).
Such a scenario is not only unacceptable, it is patently absurd, and matters could lead to civil disorder.
* * *
France in the seventeenth century
I may have written in a previous blog that in seventeenth-century France, the Sun-King’s century, aristocrats were exempt from paying taxes. The peasants paid the bulk of taxes and also paid for the nation’s wars. Moreover, when the tax-farmers came around to collect, they (the tax-farmers) often stole from the poor or were otherwise obnoxious. In seventeenth-century France, it was possible to purchase a position and one of the more lucrative of these positions was that of the tax-farmer, or tax collector.
There were good tax-farmers and not-so-good tax-farmers, but the French revolted in 1789, and, on 8 May 1794, French scientist Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (b. 26 August 1743) was guillotined. Jean-Paul Marat had “accused him of selling watered-down tobacco, and of other crimes” (Wikipedia). I suspect, however, that watered-down tobacco had little to with Lavoisier’s execution.
Lavoisier came from a rich family, but, more importantly, he had married the daughter of the co-owner of the ferme générale or tax-farmers. Twenty-eight former tax-farmers were guillotined on 8 May 1794. Ironically, a few years after he was guillotined, Lavoisier was pardoned. But he was no guiltier than Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. All three were victims.
France’s peasants
But the peasants had long been victims themselves. According to French essayist and moralist Jean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 – 10 May 1696), the peasants did not even look human. In his Caractères (1688), he writes that “[o]ne sees some timid animals, males and females, scattered about the countryside, black, pallid and burned by the sun…”
L’on voit certains animaux farouches, des mâles et des femelles, répandus par la campagne, noirs, livides, et tout brûlés du soleil …
Murray N. Rothbard: “Rise Up! The ‘Croquants’ of the 17th Century”
In an excerpt from Murray N. Rothbard’s An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, entitled “Rise Up! The ‘Croquants’ of the 17th Century” (published by The Ludwig von Mises Institute, on Thursday, 22 July 2010), one can read that in seventeenth-century France, “[t]here were repeated rebellions by groups of peasants and nobles […] from the 1630s to the 1670s. Generally, the focus of discontent and uprising was rising taxes, as well as the losses of rights and privileges.”
One rebellion, the Croquant‘s rebellion of 1636, in south-western France, “was precipitated by a sudden near-doubling of direct taxes upon the peasantry to raise funds for the war against Spain.” French peasants protested not only about the taxes imposed upon them, but they “also protested that the royal tax-collectors carried off their cattle, clothes and tools, merely to cover the costs of enforcement, so that the principal of the tax debt could never be reduced. The result was ruin.” The matter was investigated by un intendant. In a letter to his superior, La Force, the intendant, wrote that he felt compelled to endorse their complaints: “It is not, Monseigneur, that I am not, by natural feeling, touched with very great compassion when I see the extraordinary poverty in which these people live.”
Fast forward: the US
Well, currently, matters do not seem much better in the United States. As was the case in seventeenth-century France, aristocrats, i.e. the rich, want privileges exempting them from the taxes the poor and the middle class have to pay. So four hundred years later, in the US, he poor and the middle-classes are also the ones to pay taxes and it seems they will continue to do so, while the deficit remains.
US citizens have lost fathers, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, fiancé(e)s in wars that could have been avoided and now they pay taxes that do not even cover the unpaid cost of unnecessary wars. It does not seem right, and, if Sally Kohn’s analysis is accurate, which it is, there will be no redress.
The time has come to put an end to the US Civil War and realize that the nation needs a government, a government the people elect. We know from history that there can be corruption in high places, but not every president is a Richard Nixon. Besides, Nixon was impeached. The United States is a republic and a democracy. It is not an absolute monarchy.
The Need for a government and regulations: self-evident, but…
Nations need a government and the government needs money because people require well-managed services: health-care, money for the elderly, money for the disabled, money for the unemployed, money to educate children, money to look after the roads, the trains, the airlines. The government also requires funds to maintain forests and good farming land; funds to protect the environment; funds to protect the country from a would-be aggressor and, most importantly, funds to make sure everyone has a job and can afford nutritious food, clothing and an acceptable roof.
Exporting jobs: think of the consequences
Exporting jobs is one of the current ills. Too many jobs are exported and that may have dire consequences. Consider that if jobs are exported, the result is unemployment. Therefore having goods manufactured abroad may in fact be very costly. If the government has to provide adequate and perhaps permanent unemployment benefits, it will levy more taxes on its citizens. So, financially and in the long term, there may well be little to gain by exporting too many jobs.
There is considerable truth to the fable about the “Fox and the Goat” (La Fontaine (One.I.v). Before jumping into the well, make sure you know how to get out.
Fortunately, one Republican, Senator Coburn of Oklahoma, recently stood up and said that tax deductions for the mortgage on mansions, all mansions if one owns more than one, was “welfare for the wealthy.”
Civil disorder: take a look at the US Congress
As for civil disorder, it may already be a fact. There is a subversive element in Congress itself: the robotic naysayers. An American President can declare war on another country, but Congress barks when he attempts to help the needy by creating jobs.
I am truly saddened by the attitude so many Republicans have adopted regarding taxes. It is not for the poor to foot the bill. Even the affluent have to contribute their share. We are no longer in seventeenth-century France, where peasants supported the affluent, i.e. the aristocracy.
Could it be that the “American dream” is turning into a nighmare?
* * *
During the French Revolution, the means in no way justified the end. But, as a musician, I enjoy Berlioz’s arrangement of Rouget de Lisle’s “Marseillaise.” Not the words, the music.
Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869)
“La Marseillaise”
La Liberté guidant le peuple, by Eugène Delacroix (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Occasionally, WordPress suggests topics to blog about. Destructiveness, or something to that effect, is one of these topics.
What I am seeing at the moment is a nation, namely the US, who has a fine administration, but where Tea Party members and hardline Republicans are putting obstacles in the path of this administration in the naïve expectation that getting rid of the Democrats will magically eliminate America’s economic woes.
First, the current administration had nothing to do with the debt. That debt was incurred by a former administration (who had inherited a surplus by the way) and it would still be there the morning after a Republican administration might, to the consternation of most of the rest of the world, be voted into office.
It appears to most observers that the world would prefer not to deal with a parochial and intellectually weak Republican administration.
So pay the debt and support President Obama’s stimulus package. Republicans messed up America and should be charged to pay for the clean-up.
But, don’t expect miracles. Given the size of the problem; given also anti-tax extremism, the problem will not be fixed overnight.
Second, Tea Party members and hardline Republicans don’t really care about the people, and, by extension, about their country. They only care about the rich citizens who fund their election campaigns. If they cared for the nation, anti-tax extremism would disappear. If they cared, the US would have a comprehensive social program. If they cared, these elected officials would repair the harm caused by natural disasters and rebuild New Orleans. If they cared, there would be food on every table. If they cared, at least certain jobs would be repatriated and many more would be created. If they cared, veterans would be employed and suitably housed. If they cared, they would respect the duly-elected President of the United States and work with his administration at improving the lot of the common man instead of making the rich richer. Finally, if they really cared, America might actually be a genuine democracy.
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) writes that in a democracy, first, “the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men.” Second, in a democracy “the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common.” [1]
But they don’t care. Obstructionism is a game and, given what is at stake, the survival of America and the health of global markets, it’s an unacceptable game.
Where could I find a better example to shed light upon destructiveness?
* * *
October 6, 2011
[1] Gilbert K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, “The Ethics of Elflandˮ (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1943), pp. 82-83.
The tripartite motto of France: liberté, égalité, fraternité started out as bipartite: liberté and égalité. However, although it lagged behind, it is in no way the lesser third of the motto.
Two days ago, in a blog entitled: “It is the fate of princes to be ill-spoken of for well-doing.” I suggested that a true democracy demanded equality and that such was also the case with capitalism, as capitalism was originally conceived. However, I did not make “fraternité” or brotherhood the basis of both a true democracy and healthy capitalism.
Anti-Tax Extremism
Now, if “anti-tax extremism” (Sally Kohn, CNN, September 14th, 2011) militates against both democracy and capitalism, it seems to me that it does so because it encourages runaway individualism, thus negating the importance of collective needs. For instance, it is legitimate to keep people away from one’s backyard. But it is also legitimate for people to expect the town or city to keep sidewalks and streets clean. This is why citizens pay municipal taxes.
Otherwise said, we are all individuals, but we live in a collectivity, hence the importance of brotherhood and the wrongs of ill-conceived and undiluted individualism. Individualism and collectivism are the two faces of the same coin and any lack of balance between these two jeopardizes a democracy or a republic (France).
Moderation
In Ancient Greece wisdom was moderation and moderation, in the current case, is a middle-course between serving the needs of individuals as well as collective needs. Problems arise when one goes too far from moderate and reasonable goals. Extremism must therefore be contained as energetically as terrorism, because terrorism is a violent manifestation of extremism. As for “anti-tax extremism” (Sally Kohn, CNN, September 14th, 2011), it is unbridled individualism. It counters the reasonable, the civil and, ultimately, the diplomatic.
John Jacob Astor & the Voyageur
When, after the War of 1812, John Jacob Astor (1763 –1848) was “getting Congress to legislate the North-West Company out of the upper Mississippi Valley,” Ramsay Crooks, his “pupil and successor,” convinced him that “Congress must make an exception in the case of voyageur [Canadian boatmen] when passing a law excluding all foreigners from the American fur trade.”[i]
Crooks also pointed out that “[i]t will be good policy to admit freely & without the least restraint the Canadian Boatmen. these [sic] people are indispensable to the successful prosecution of the trade, their places cannot be supplied by Americans, who are for the most part are [sic] too independent to submit quietly top a proper controul [sic], and who can gain any where a subsistence much superior to a man of the interior and although the body of the Yankee can resist as much hardship as any man, tis only in the Canadian we find that the temper of mind, to render him patient docile and perserving [probably persevering].* It could by that the Canadian boatmen were too “docile,” but they did not misunderstand individualism.
Accountability
The United States is currently experiencing its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, because the previous Republican Administration made injudicious decisions: generous tax cuts for the rich and two unfunded wars. In other words, Republicans created the economic crisis President Obama is trying to end, and the world remembers. So the time has come for these hardline Republicans to be held, not entirely, but partly accountable for the harm a Republican administration has caused their nation.
Please note that I am not using the word “punish.” Punishment is out the question. Accountability, however, is of a higher and more dignified order. If these Republicans will not take responsibility for the current state of the US economy and, therefore, not assist President Obama in helping pass the stimulus package their nation requires, the verdict is in. These hardline Republicans have strayed from a middle-course and, given that the poor and the middle-class suffer, not to mention other economies, one wonders whether or not they have a conscience.
Conclusion
Even anti-tax extremists would fight anti-tax extremism if they could view it as self-serving and as a threat to the health and survival of the nation as a democracy or res publica, things belonging to the public, including the environment.**
Think about it.
—ooo—
[i] Grace Lee Nute, The Voyageur (St Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1955 [1931], pp. 203-204.
I have reread yesterday’s post (December 13th, 2011).
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