FRN Columnists' Corner - "Life After Death and Taxes" by Jonathan David Morris

Free Republic Network ^ | 8-25-03 | Jonathan David Morris

[Bob J]

FRN Columnists' Corner

"Life After Death and Taxes"

by Jonathan David Morris

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You may have missed it, what with all the uproar out in California lately, but another state with budget troubles, Alabama is apparently pitting God against Country in an effort to balance its books. Or at least that's the impression you'd get from Republican Gov. Bob Riley, who recently suggested that good little Christians pay taxes... and lots of them.

"According to our Christian ethics, we're supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor," Riley said last month. "It is immoral to charge somebody making $5,000 an income tax."

And he's right... almost. The truth, however, is that it's immoral to charge anyone an income tax at all.

Now, don't get me wrong: I do believe we have a duty to do what we can for the poor. But that doesn't mean we should take care of them. On the contrary, it means we should make sure they can care for themselves. I suppose it's tough love to say the poor shouldn't receive limitless handouts, but there's nothing un-Christian about it. If you love someone, you're supposed to set them free. God's supposed to help those who help themselves, after all. I mean, even salvation isn't doled out like welfare -- you've got to make a conscious effort to obtain it. Your savior won't come in the form of monthly checks.

This is the do-it-yourself mentality upon which our country was founded. Our capitalist democracy is built to recognize free will (often thought to be God-given), and it's therefore designed to respect the right of the people to govern themselves. But sadly, we're slouching away from this ideal.

It would appear that we no longer trust ourselves with self-reliance and control. We sue tobacco and fast food companies now, as if to say we're stupid and easily duped. We ban certain kinds of beer, and driving fast, and telemarketers, and it's all fine and good because we figure nobody needs these things. But where does it end? When do we take a step back and let the people confront evil and/or market forces on their own?

As a country, we've become too reliant on government when it comes to solving societal ills. We have no faith in ourselves nowadays, but yet we have undying trust in our judges, career politicians, and manmade State.

But perhaps you've heard of another Alabaman public figure tackling issues of religion lately -- I refer to Chief Justice Roy Moore, who has ruffled some federal judges' feathers by refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument on display at his courthouse.

Now, granted, not everyone under Moore's jurisdiction believes in the Judeo-Christian God. No doubt, there are plenty of people who don't believe in any god -- much less anything at all -- and, if that's their choice, then they deserve this right. All the same, however, there are plenty of people who do believe in God, and they obviously comprise a majority -- enough so that Gov. Riley tried justifying taxes with religious rhetoric. It stands to reason, then, that if non-religious folk deserve protection from institutional prosylitizing, the "believers" deserve protection from state-sponsored atheism, too.

It astonishes how many people miss this.

I was watching Fox News Channel this past weekend when an anchor -- Gregg Jarrett, I believe -- went on with much vigor about how unconstitutional Moore's monument was. The First Amendment then appeared on the screen, and he read as follows to support his argument: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." And, indeed, the first sentence of the First Amendment says that, but the quote tells half of the story. The whole line reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" (emphasis mine). Clearly, it's not the same thing.

Remember a few weeks back when people called George W. Bush a liar because he said Iraq sought uranium from Africa? Remember how critics conveniently ignored the fact that Bush credited British intelligence, which stood by the story? Well, FNC's misrepresentation of the First Amendment was similarly disingenuous and unfair.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from it. If we're not supposed to have laws "prohibiting" its "free exercise," where do we get off curtailing the free speech of Alabama's apparent God-fearing majority? Do they revoke their right to express themselves because they're many in number? And, if so, where’s it said to do that in the First Amendment? I must've skipped that part.

But perhaps the issue here isn't Moore's display, anyway. Perhaps it's his assertion that the Ten Commandments form the foundation of American law -- in which case one's forced to wonder if our federal judges want to usurp old moral authorities in favor of their own.

Look, I don't want to sound overzealous, but I can't help but think there's a connection between the current anti-religious agenda and the concerted big government push. No, we don't need a return to divine rule, nor a system in which folks are punished for having the "wrong beliefs," but we do need a little balance here. Because the way I figure, America has an official religion now, and it's something we call socialism.

Karl Marx envisioned a society where no one owned a single, solitary thing. But America's Founders knew better. They believed in Property as an incentive towards the betterment of mankind. They spoke not of Happiness but of its Pursuit, and this is the crux of free will. It's a system in which people of all kinds -- black or white, religious or not -- get an equal chance to pass or fail. From a system that respects the rights of individuals, you can't ask for much more.

Yet we, the people, have failed to defend this system. Never more so than when dealing with our racist past, we've stood by -- paralyzed by our own human failings -- as our system's taken the blame for the mistakes we've made. Rather than offering the poor and oppressed what they were previously denied (i.e., an equal shot at the American dream), we've bowed down before the politically correct altar and prayed for a godlike State to correct things. By backing down from honest discussions on things like immigration and affirmative action, we've enslaved ourselves as well as the poor to a government that perpetually grows. What do we get in return, though? Flawed educations. Porous borders. All gay high schools. Oh, and promises. Let's not forget the promises. "We'll fix things when you give us more money." Thanks, but no thanks. That's a promise you can keep.

And this brings me back to the point I was making before about taxation, the Ten Commandments, and the tendency of judges to seize moral control. You want to know what scares big government the most? It's the Commandment which states, "Thou shalt not steal," because that's what big government does. It steals. From you. From me.

A separation of church and state? Nice try. The state is our church now. We know the score. We see how we're forced to tithe on the 1st and 15th of each month.

I understand we're living in a fairly postmodern society now, where right is wrong and wrong is right, but I'm certain that theft -- regardless -- is wrong. God sure seemed to think so, seeing as how He included it in His Most Holy Top Ten list of pet peeves. So we can only imagine what God must think of an institution which thrives on this sin. Surely He'd condemn the Mafia, wouldn't He? And much like the mob, the government doesn't go to work with you each morning. It doesn't wake up to your ear-piercing alarm clock, sit in traffic with you, or listen to your boss's latest line of bull. Yet we continue to send it 30, 40, or 50 percent of our earnings, and instead of saving us from our troubles it compounds them. Its bureaucracy clogs up the works.

This isn't about taking from the rich and giving to the poor. It's about taking, period. It's about depriving every hard-working American of the voice their paycheck -- or God, or favorite Founder -- gives them.

Americans ought to stand up and shout now the words of Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death." For taxation is tyranny and the socialist life is no life at all.

© 2003 Jonathan David Morris