on today's "parties", particularly in Boston

[acroyear]

Lance Mannion on Republican Free-Riding : Mike the Mad Biologist:

I'm struck by Mannion's point, having been surrounded this morning by thousands of Tea Buggers, who:

1) Took the government-funded T to the rally.
2) Drove on government-funded roads to the rally.
3) Had the rally held in a publicly-funded and maintained area (the Boston Common).
4) Had security provided by the government--the Boston Police Department.

We won't even broach the topic of using the DARPA-develop internet as an organizing tool. Yet "taxes are too high" and "government is the problem.

One common "complaint" (in so much as the tea-baggers even have a mutual complaints department) is that, particularly with the (removed from the damn bill, so why do they keep bringing it up) idea of "government paying for abortions", in that they claim abortion is morally reprehensible and their tax dollars shouldn't be paying for it.

Fine.

I'd love it if my tax dollars weren't subsidizing a number of things, too, that I find morally reprehensible

1. government contractors working under agreements that they can not be sued or prosecuted for breaking the laws of either America or the country they are deployed to, especially after committing cold-blooded murder of unarmed civilians.
2. government detention and torture facilities located in a country we *technically* still consider to be our sworn enemy.
3. government detention and torture, without cause or evidence, in gross violation of the 4th and 8th amendment.
4. an unjust war declared against a sovereign nation that had not committed or subsidized any direct act of malice against us, nor violated the UN agreement to which we claim was our right to enforce.
5. unwarranted wiretapping of the phones of American citizens under a catch-22 legal status that means the courts can't actually act against them in reasserting our rights
6. farm subsidies originally instigated to protect the "small American farmer" that doesn't exist anymore, and now merely are pure profit for mega-farm corporations that mostly ignore their local population and hire cheap foreign immigrants, all the while using that very profit to lobby for looser environmental regulations to allow them to dump tons of animal waste directly into the water supply
7. teachers and school administrators abusing their positions of authority over our children to preach their particular version of "christianity" as if it was the only gospel truth, in gross violation of the 1st amendment (and God's own laws, while we're at it...)
   

and any number of other things going on out there that the vast majority of the American population doesn't give a shit about and really should.

The truth is that if the government stopped spending our tax dollars on stuff that a minority (even a significant minority) found they didn't want, didn't think they needed or would never use, or was "morally reprehensible", then quite simply NOTHING would get done.

And while the pure libertarian might like that idea, the rationalist in me is far too aware of what the history of corporatist-driven anarchy is like.

Comments

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

Elections have consequences.

When the guy I didn't like and didn't vote for won, I got two wars and tax cuts for the rich, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

When they guy they didn't like and didn't vote for won, they got the Lilly Ledbetter Act and Affordable Care Act (and bailouts that were started in part by the guy they voted for). And it sucks that they don't get their way—but they should have remembered that when they were winning.

As Jon Stewart says, "It's called LOSING. It's supposed to taste like a shit sandwich."

[dawntreader]

yours was much less frothy than mine. i've been reading too many articles. good thing i have other outlets. :)

but what you said is true. it's universal even if the issues are different. i don't like paying for crap i don't want or need but i have to so that i can get the crap i do want and need. it's called Living In A Society. we all deal.