Wednesday, September 3, 2008

An Integrated Republic



They tell you they are not going to tax your family.

No, they're just going to tax "businesses"! So unless you buy something from a "business", like groceries or clothes or gasoline ... or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small "business", don't worry ... it's not going to affect you.

They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the "other" side of the bucket! That's their idea of tax reform.

My friends, we need a leader who stands on principle.

-- Fred Thompson, Keynote speaker, RNC, September 2, 2008

This metaphor says it all - in economics, in justice, in cultural values - whatever takes root in our society.

Just as slavery in the 1800s exacted its toll on the whole country, anyone who is not free to forge his purpose out of hardship or out of success cannot rise far abiding slavery. All live in and dance around the diminished possibility and spirit of one of their kind. When one man is not allowed by force to be a man in the fullest sense of the word - in the sense that he is the captain of his soul - no man can.

The idea that one can take from the freedom of the people in one half of the bucket to increase the freedom of the other half of the bucket is folly - pure and simple. It can't be done

How, is it said, can it be done? By instituting slavery. Taxation is Forced Labor for multitudes of programs you never chose nor would ever choose. It didn't work in the 1800s and it won't work in the 2000s.

Political freedom, including economic freedom, is how you fill the bucket. But some think with small minds.

LIMITED
I am riding on a limited express,
one of the crack trains of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue
haze and dark air go fifteen
all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust
and all the men and women laughing
in the diners and sleepers shall
pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where
he is going and he answers: "Omaha."
Carl Sandberg, The Chicago Poems, 1916

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