In the spirit of Aikido, I have come up with something that could fit on a bumper sticker or a protest sign that may resonate with Tea Partiers to use their complaints about spending against them. Since military spending is over 50% of the federal budget, how about we make this bumper sticker:
Freedom Isn't Free: Quit Complaining About Taxes!
Comments
Nice. But we might also want them to complain about the war taxes. No more taxes for Afghanistan. Fix America, Not Iraq.
I think we need to do both, but this puts the wedge where it is needed.
Awesome idea!! I'm sure the average tea party member will shift their perspectives to the progressive side once they view your bumper sticker.
No claim of miracles. The point is to frame their frame for others to evaluate. I think the idea that war is an expensive folly and luxury has a better chance of fitting into their story. There is some populist support for building schools here instead of in Afghanistan.
Sure makes Communism sound like paradise
Does it? Are taxes signs of Communism or Democracy? Seems to me Communism sort of does away with taxes by making the system mandatory and sufficient. You get what you need to live and contribute automatically. Without income disparity, there would be no need for a tax schedule. The ultimate "Flat Tax."
I think the important factor is the idea that democracy is about using government in the interest of the people instead of being ruled by dominators be they political or economic. When our "State" is bought and sold by Commerce it is as bad as if it were run by the Church. Or by Medicine, as it is to a large degree, or even by "The Law" when it become the Curia. Keeping the democratic State sovereign is essential to democracy.
That means we need to ante up for democracy and have a State able to secure our freedoms. Notice the verb is "secure," not grant them. The point is that our Natural Rights do not occur in nature but only in the construct of a society where they can be secured and realized. This is why Freedom is not Free, but why the point ought to be about taxes more than about war. The Imperial State is not democratic. We need to end the Empire to get it back.
Taxation is a right reserved for congress in the constitution. So unless you're willing to compare the founding fathers to Stalin, I don't think you have ground to stand on.
As far as the "quit complaining" part goes, obviously this is tongue-in-cheek. I would never motion to block anyones right to the 1st amendment, but this is using the cons arguments against them. When we speak out against the war, they call us Un-American and tell us that if we don't like it we can leave the country. Just politely giving them a dose of their own medicine.
The point of the quote is that if you want to complain about taxes and deficits, then you should be complaining about the unfunded Bush wars first and foremost.
A proper conservative party IMO should be looking for efficiancy in gov't and maintaining control of spending. Instead they have their hand in the till for their corporate allies and only opose spending for something such as unemployment benefits. There is nothing conservative at all about cutting taxes and creating debt in doing so. Cutting spending for the purpose of cutting taxes and disregarding the ramifications is not conservative either IMO. Being pro war is not conservative, nor is being a liberatarian...As I see it the current republican party serves no constructive role in conservatism.....Under a premise of being anti gov't, one must assume that the party is anti "We the people" as well, being we are one and the same
Qouting me the constitution, There is some irony for you.
If tax's is the price for freedom (freedom being undefined, of course) then by giving up all our income, our property and our assets would make this a freedom paradise. I mean a skipping through the fields of wild flowers free.
Don't you find it somewhat disturbing that someone just told you that your freedom going cost you money. seems a bit contray to FREEdom
As with all the important "truths" of life, Freedom is not a linear or literal factoid. It is a dynamic moral truth, a fundamental principle based in our human nature. But it is not just about MY freedom. It is about all of our freedom.
That's where it gets complicated. Paine qualified the concept of individual freedom by insisting that it be "for all or none." Wow. This is a big thing, even a BFD! Unless all of us are free, none of us really are? But the world he lived in was divided between "freemen" and slaves and the indentured. Paine saw that this was not "freedom," just the old dominator frame of ownership as freedom.
Or we can use the Woody Allen frame of freedom for the lion and the lamb to sleep together. And Allen notes, the lion will get the better night's sleep.
St. Paul, a much brighter guy than his modern reputation allows, saw the conflict with freedom and sin. Unless freedom be practiced with love for the other, it will become how the strong devour the weak. Mutuality is the civil equivalent of love, and it is the other ingredient required for freedom to have civil and political integrity.
The adolescent perception of freedom is all about "me." As a necessary act of growing up and breaking away from parental authority, this is a precious developmental preoccupation. It is no place to locate one's maturity.
The slogan "freedom is not free" has been used to intimidate peace advocates with militarism. I have no trouble bringing that slogan to the service of a much more profound truth and deeper understanding of the cost of freedom. It is why the alternative to government is not freedom and why the price of freedom is investing ourselves in the project called democracy. It is a mutuality, not something individuals who do not embrace mutuality can experience. It is a both/and, not a denial of individuality. In fact, without the pluralism of mutuality and interdependence, you have no individuality that matters.
The tea partiers torpedoed their own message by the very fact that they're not anarchist libertarians (as I am). Their support of a single tax contradicts what they're saying, let alone supporting "offensive" spending.
OK, you are absolved of all responsibility for Tea Party slogans and rants. Your own self-identity as an "anarchist libertarian" puts you in a different politically irrelevant ideological box. Radical personal freedom without any government is what I guess the label means.
As I posted above, freedom must be universal and mutual to be freedom instead of predatory license. To govern ourselves requires a government, not a mere voluntarism where idealism is the only way it could work. If everyone were a saint we would not need laws or governments. If we do not govern ourselves, others will rule over us. Inevitably.
My point is that freedom requires us to participate in democracy. That is the real price, and taxes are a mere symbol of our real commitment to be in this boat together. There are ways to be a non-participant and to "hide out" from participating in democracy by staying private. We will not harm those who "drop out" because they don't care for going to meetings or learning about voting. You still have to pay your taxes because they are for services we all use and share.
If your resentment leads you to sabotage democracy, on the other hand, we will have to smack you down. Oh, you did not agree to be born here, I know. Boo hoo.
The tea partiers torpedoed their own message by the very fact that they're not anarchist libertarians (as I am). Their support of a single tax contradicts what they're saying, let alone supporting "offensive" spending.
So you're really an anarchist? No government at all?
So I could just walk up and shoot you in the head and there would be no legal consequences?
Huh. How 'bout that.
On the other hand, on the positive side. There's a story that novice bomber pilots would ask their navigators "How do we know when we're getting close to the target?" Answer - "When they start shooting at us." So you can take heart that the more they attack you and point out that they are perfectly willing (dare I say eager) to use violence against you, you can be sure that they see you as a danger. So keep speaking truth to power.
So you're really an anarchist? No government at all?
So I could just walk up and shoot you in the head and there would be no legal consequences?
Huh. How 'bout that.
Common law/emergent law are not forms of law? They kept the anarchist Icelandic Commonwealth running strong for three centuries.
The idea that FIAT law -- the law arbitrarily decided upon by the ruling class in power -- is the only type of law is an utter fallacy.
I first started listening to Hartmann after hearing incessant strawman attacks on libertarianism, and have devoted a good portion of my time since then to debunking the approximately 2,000 economic fallacies he spews in every column. The very fact that he called Alan Greenspan a libertarian in a column of his single-handedly proves he knows nothing about libertarianism, and that anyone who opposes his utopian system of "benevolent" central planning is labeled as such only furthers my point.
He could not for the life of him distinguish between George W. Bush, Alan Greenspan, and Ludwig Von Mises. If you oppose his corporate-fascist vision of society falsely called "progressive", you of course hate everyone except "the rich" and want a corporate-feudal oligarchy (demonstrating how oblivious he is to the fact that libertarianism -- in its original 19th-century roots AND in its pure form today at the Mises Insititute -- is a movement AGAINST the corporate-feudal oligarchy).
Well....libertarianism has shifted from its roots:
An original libertatrian thinker (Benjamin Tucker) had this to say many years ago:
He argued, "strikes, whenever and wherever inaugurated, deserve encouragement from all the friends of labour. . . They show that people are beginning to know their rights, and knowing, dare to maintain them." [18] and furthermore, "as an awakening agent, as an agitating force, the beneficent influence of a strike is immeasurable. . . with our present economic system almost every strike is just. For what is justice in production and distribution? That labour, which creates all, shall have all."
I don't see many libertarians stating that today.
And, libertarians don't address the core issue when they challenge government. . Wherever a system exists that enables large concentrations of wealth...any government,,,,, even weak government,... is captured and legislation written to serve those "special interests". It evolves into the same powerful, hierarchial structures it replaced.
Can't have your cake and eat it too..
Probably early libertarians didn't see "free trade" morphing into totally shifting labor costs from one nation to another. Ricardo warned over a century ago, that if a nation allows a shifting of labor costs (outsourcing) ...it will impoverish itself. Some individuals, of course, will profit handsomely by doing it.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a idsease".
"An original libertatrian thinker (Benjamin Tucker) had this to say many years ago:
He argued, "strikes, whenever and wherever inaugurated, deserve encouragement from all the friends of labour. . . They show that people are beginning to know their rights, and knowing, dare to maintain them." [18] and furthermore, "as an awakening agent, as an agitating force, the beneficent influence of a strike is immeasurable. . . with our present economic system almost every strike is just. For what is justice in production and distribution? That labour, which creates all, shall have all."
I don't see many libertarians stating that today.
^Which libertarians are you referring to? Alan Greenspan? *chuckles*
Benjamin Tucker understood that the corporate paradigm is a product of *government*, not market forces. I agree with him. Tucker supported free-market unions and strikes, as do I. He would not support a strike where an employer was forced with an implicit death threat not to fire the strikers and hire (read: freely associate) different workers who voluntarily wish to work rather than ask the government to pay them higher than their marginal productivity.
One such modern-day libertarian who supports the above is Kevin Carson, a mutualist anarchist and libertarian socialist. I do as well.
And libertarianism has not shifted at all, as long as you don't conflate vulgar libertarians with classical libertarians like Tucker. The only shift was from the labor theory of value to the subjective theory of value.
And, libertarians don't address the core issue when they challenge government. . Wherever a system exists that enables large concentrations of wealth...any government,,,,, even weak government,... is captured and legislation written to serve those "special interests". It evolves into the same powerful, hierarchial structures it replaced.
^The only reason government gets corrupted by private entities is because it offers something they can buy. That *only* comes when the government becomes interventionist. A minimal-state restricted to only protecting justly-acquired private property, police, courts, etc would never be bought out, because there would be no privilege to gain. Anarchism would be IMPOSSIBLE for private entities or anyone to co-opt. No centralized power could ever emerge.
Probably early libertarians didn't see "free trade" morphing into totally shifting labor costs from one nation to another. Ricardo warned over a century ago, that if a nation allows a shifting of labor costs (outsourcing) ...it will impoverish itself. Some individuals, of course, will profit handsomely by doing it."
Benjamin Tucker listed tariffs/protectionism as one of the Four Monopolies that prevent anarchist socialism from emerging, and instead trap societies into corporate statism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tucker#The_Four_Monopolies)
NAFTA and the WTO are not free-trade. In fact, they are utterly riddled with trade restrictions, quotas, etc. And the classical economists were heavily flawed.
And actual free trade is *not* impoverishing. Am I impoverished by the fact that I can buy goods from China for $5 as opposed to being *forced* to buy them from America for $15? If protecting American industry from China is so good for society, why not erect protectionist barriers between states? Why not then erect protectionist barriers between cities? The laws of economics do not change as the matrix of individual exchange -- colloqually referred to as society -- expands. Opposition to free trade logically leads to endorsement of hand-to-mouth and the utter rejection of the division of labor. Not even so-called opponents of free trade like yourself would go that far. Therefore, you would admit that free trade *is* good at some level. But again, the laws of economics don't start and stop according to how large the matrix of interacting individuals is. See Murray Rothbard's article on the topic: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard125.html
The only people who are impoverished are those special interests who are protected by tariffs. Don't conflate the interests of a handful of workers with the interests of the aggregate of individuals colloqually referred to as "society". Methodological individualism is your friend.