Posted on 04/16/2016 5:45:43 AM PDT by Kaslin
There is much we can learn from Hobbit tax policy.
After completing the long journey to send the ring of fire back into the fiery caverns from which it came, the four hobbits return to their beloved shire only to find their family and friends enslaved under a system of taxes and fair distribution.
Since only a few Americans are old enough to have experienced life before the federal income tax was passed in 1913, it can be hard to imagine life without it. The beauty of literature is that it allows us to imagine a place we have never experienced before.
The Shire was once a thriving community of Hobbits found in the rolling green hills and tall trees of northwest Middle Earth. The Hobbits had a deeply entrenched culture, evidenced best by the strict meal schedule they adhered to. Property rights were unanimously assumed and everyone worked to bring beauty to their own land. The Hobbits were never hesitant when it came to celebrating together, whether it be over a good beer at the Green Dragon or blowing smoke rings under the party tree during Bilbos 111th birthday party.
They had a mayor, Michael Delving, and he won reelection every seven years. His primary duty was to preside over banquets, but he was also the postmaster and sheriff. The Hobbits asked very little of their government because they lived together in harmony built on the foundations of mutual goodwill.
And there were no taxes.
However, Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin were forced to sacrifice this cheerful lifestyle to destroy the ring. They were left with no choice; the powers growing in the east would eventually consume the Shire and all of its beauty.
Despite the success of the four hobbits, the war in the east did not leave the Shire unscathed. In Frodos absence, the evil wizard Saruman, a notorious swindler, managed to convince other Hobbits to break with their culture and seize the Bagginss property. Through manipulation and deceit, Saruman transformed the Shire. He assumed power over the Hobbits with propaganda and false promises of protection. Ugly buildings replaced the once lush green countryside and trees. Hobbits were forced into a newly constructed social hierarchy of power with strict regulations. Essential to the takeover, of course, were the newly implemented taxes for fair distribution by the artificial and newly-designated elite.
Even the party tree was slain.
It appears that all notions of individual responsibility and love of thy neighbor had been chased away by fear of violence and false guarantees of security.
But it did not last. Upon their return, Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin refuse to accept the current state of life in the Shire. They take action to abolish the tax system and realize the Shire of their memories. Sarumans cronyism is exposed, his grip on the Hobbits minds loosened, and his power devitalized.
The ugly buildings are deconstructed and new trees are planted. The Shire will never be the same as it was, but a similar one is beginning to take route.
Middle Earth exists only in the great mind of Tolkien and the imagination of his readers, but the story sounds eerily familiar. We live in a society where nearly all voters were born after the passage of the income tax in 1913, after the two World Wars, after the New Deal, and after President Johnsons war on poverty. None of us know what it is like to live with a small government having a big government is now part of our culture. As a result, it is hard for us to imagine a government where the same person occupies Mayor, Sheriff and postmaster year after year and does nothing, because the people take care of each other out of mutual goodwill.
When I hear our government and certain politicians try to legitimize their intrusion into every facet of our lives from choosing our doctors to choosing what kind of transportation we are allowed to take home after a night with friends I am reminded of how Saruman used protectionist propaganda to invade further into the Hobbits lives.
Unfortunately, some people believe the phrases lower taxes and deregulation only come from supposed corporate shills, but I disagree. When I hear those phrases, I think of Hobbits, the Shire and freedom.
Refreshing.
The left has distorted the Robin Hood story to a steal from the rich give to the poor. When the story has Robin stealing from the tax collector and returning the money.
Wasn’t it McCain who had a problem with hobbits?
We in America would like to think we won the Cold War, that we defeated totalitarian communism. But in fact, it simply decentralized, and is now actively working to infect the world. One of the leading contenders for the presidency is an avowed socialist! In Germany, France, and Scandinavia, socialists rule in defiance of the people. Venezuela is suffocating under its socialist policies, while Brazil may never recover from its own.
Saruman is in the Shire.
I would've found that version of the movie far more interesting than the version Peter Jackson put out.
After a while all those over-the-top computer graphics and ludicrous battle scenes become boring.
Error. Michel Delving was the town where the Mayor lived, not the Mayor himself.
Good, but one small quibble. Michael Delving was the town where the mayor resided, not the name of the mayor. Will Whitfoot was the actual mayor during most of Lord of the Rings.
Sorry. Just an obsessive Tolkien fanatic. We now return you to your regularly scheduled economics lesson.
Beautiful. I must confess that underlying themes in literature and cinema escape me.
Makes me want to read the books again. Great article. Thanks for posting it!
You're not the only one. :-)
I thought it was Kanye.
“Sarumans cronyism is exposed, his grip on the Hobbits minds loosened, and his power devitalized. “
More to the point, his own favourite lackey (Grima) cuts his throat and then is shot; a little harsher than ‘devitalized.’
I mostly liked Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. I still tear up at the charge of the Rohirrim onto the Pelanor Fields - I had never really expected to see a good portrayal of that scene, and I find that one of the most moving uses of CGI. The places Jackson didn’t get right were mostly the smaller moments.
The Hobbit movies are another matter. You can only watch so many roller coaster chases through underground tunnels with the hero jumping from dozens of crumbling footholds the instant before it collapses before it gets old. And don’t get me started on the Laketown Les Miserables that Jackson made up out of whole cloth. It didn’t really follow the spirit of Bilbo’s There and Back Again.
A cute notion certainly, but one must remain wary of applying lessons from literature, and theorizing about putative outcomes in our current state of affairs.
The tranquil domestic life of hobbits and their routine activities descends directly from their essential nature: readers might recall that they are not human. They had hardly any “government” (as the author stated flatly, in the preface to the trilogy’s revised edition), because they didn’t need any. Unlike humans, they did not require officialdom to keep them in line, to restrain them from violence or other antisocial activities.
The author himself did comment outside the work, on the ruination (partial and temporary) that befell the Shire near the book’s end. He declared that it was an essential part of the story, foreseen from the beginning.
Kaslin is right to point out the woes likely to befall any country that insists on Progressive-inspired policies requiring egalitarian economic outcomes.
We find tragedy moving - in senses both dramatic and historical - not because of the horror and suffering, but because of its inevitability. Once a decision gets made, certain processes must work their way through to the very end, no matter the impact, along the way and at the final destination.
Looked upon in that light, _The Lord of the Rings_ is a tragedy. So is _The Silmarillion_, the cycle of legends and myths that is both cosmological and foundational, in which J.R.R. Tolkien codifies the very creation of the universe and the founding of Middle Earth within it. In that work, _The Lord of the Rings_ is covered in barely the last couple pages.
Trees taking route? They have Ents in the Shire?
I guess it is too much to proofread things and hire an editor to catch the inevitable typos that crepe[sic] into even the best writer's text.
"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Yeah, that pisses me off.
He did a pretty good job in spite of that, but the saddest part of the movie is he could never replicate how good the good guys were, or why.
He never quite understood what Tolkien was saying. He never really got it. He thought the new kingdom of Middle Earth was a Marxist heaven.
And here I fell asleep during the big 'scenery shots'--in the theater. Mrs Joe woke me up when they started 'doing stuff' again.
It's the easiest thing in the world to imagine a place like that. But we won't see anything like that here ever again.
And just how idyllic the old world was is something people at the time took issue with. That's why we got big government and high taxes to begin with (well, that and two world wars).
I can't really picture Frodo and Bilbo with W2s, 1040s, and 1099s, but if the Hobbits really want to do away with the income tax, maybe they should tax Hobbit pipe weed and ale instead.
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