Years & years ago, when I was living in California and Alan Keyes had a radio show, I remember him saying something to the effect that Americans should NEVER give the government peremptory claim to their money.

His argument was from principle: Taxes are a liberty issue. One means of a citizen expressing disagreement with the government is, yes, the vote, but another means, perhaps an even more effective one, is for a citizen to reduce the amount of money that goes to the government.

When the citizen is in direct & tangible control of that expression of power (i.e. they can legally and immediately express dissent by starving the government), the primary power of governance resides with the citizen. When the citizen cannot legally and immediately express dissent in that fashion, primary power shifts to the government.

There is also the issue of taxing earnings vs. taxing consumption. Keyes believes the former is deeply immoral and contrary to our founding principles, but I won’t go too deeply into this angle since I don’t think many here would disagree.

Anyhoo.

I spoke above about the abundance of viable ideas re: improving the current mess, but I can’t help but think that the radix of the malorum is indeed the cupiditas. It comes down to money. Money funds all those infernal social engineering programs. Money floats the mandarin class’s ability to continue being the mandarin class. Money is the medium in the accretion of political power and the bestowing of political favors. Money is the weapon of choice in the envy battle of the class war.

Money, let’s face it, is one of the three or four fundamental motivators of mankind. Always has been and always will be. (Sex, revenge & honor being the others.)

Money is not only WHY they do what they do, it is HOW they do what they do.

Willie Suttons that they are, the thieves flock by the thousands and tens of thousands to Washington (and Harrisburg, and Sacramento, and Albany, Boston, Springfield, Saint Paul, etc.) because that’s where the money is.

No amount of spending caps, term limits, checks & balances (which tentacle of the octopus has power over another tentacle?), will amount to much as long as the Tax/Borrow/Print-$ spigot keeps gushing dollars.

How do fed-up citizens shut off the spigot? Without getting jailed or shot?

I will leave that simple little question to the superior brains at BC. I haven’t had breakfast yet and, wouldn’t you know it, this is one of those weekends when I had to bring a bunch of office work home with me.