Oh that most dastardly of words in the course of all human existence.
Well, maybe not the most dastardly; the word “Hitler” still has my vote in that department.
Truth be told, the word “tax” doesn’t seem to conjure the same pejorative connotation outside of the United States. Some people believe taxes build roads and schools and pay for police and fire departments. Others, like me, believe unseen creatures assemble our buildings and bridges in underground factories and hydraulically lift stuff to the surface while we sleep, only asking in return the sacrifice of Yvette Mimieux. Still, like our crack news media, I try to keep an open mind on the subject.
“If you leave your mind sufficiently open, someone will come along and throw trash in it.”
-Ambrose Bierce
I try not to read History books because they’re all written by Democrats who insist the Hoover Dam wasn’t built by that great friend of the working man, Herbert Hoover, but rather, by some guy named "Boulder." I will concede the point of some historians that King John may have signed the Magna Carta due to pressure from uber-wealthy landholders who wanted their taxes lowered, but that just means there is an eight hundred year Anlo-American tradition of the wealthy not paying their fair share of taxes – or any taxes.
Tradition is important!
And since the Magna Carta was a model for our own Constitution, that means our Constitution was strictly created to give tax loopholes to the rich. Gotcha Brandeis!! The landed gentry managed to convince King John to “ay-lay ightly-lay on usiness-bay ax-tay” (that’s Middle English meaning “milketh the poor”). But the wealthy had to figure out how to lower their rates without getting the serfs too pissed off. And what happened? Well, I’m going to tell you. Those wealthy landowners produced millions of really super new serf jobs while making the rich richer. They called it “the Dogma of the Dripping Grog,” That’s just historical fact, and I'm sure Newt Gingrich agrees with me.
But in general (and in sharp contrast with Americans), the British remain a sober bunch when it comes to dealing with the reality of taxes. I know this to be true because I looked up the definition of the word “tax” in well-known British and American dictionaries. The difference in definitions was startling:
Tax - a British dictionary definition
“An amount of money paid to the government, which is based on your income or the cost of goods or services you have bought.”
That seemed logical, reasonable and non-threatening enough for me, but then I made the mistake of cross-checking the definition in a leading American dictionary. It came back with no less than five definitions – all scary.
Tax - an American dictionary definition (5 choices)
1: to assess or determine judicially the amount of (costs in a court action).
Exactly. Taxes destroy Karl Rove’s master plan for tort reform and leave crooked corporations, er, common Americans vulnerable to paying for crimes they haven’t committed - and then the price of lead-based teddy bears begins to skyrocket.
2: to levy a tax on.
God I hate the word “levy.” It’s never associated with anything good. Just ask the folks in St. Tammany Parish.
I knew Brownie was innocent; twas the tax man killed the Southeast.
3: obsolete : to enter (a name) in a list Obsolete? Perhaps, but still so, so true. You see, Americans know taxes are evil ‘cause it says so right in their authorized Bibles, and if it’s authorized, then it's good to go.
4: charge, accuse ; also : censure.
Well, duh! Those tax folks are trying to make criminals out of law-abiding citizens and then lock us away in squalid, archery-less rendition camps in the Poconos.
5: To make onerous and rigorous demands on .
Number five happens to be my numero uno definition, for I believe it successfully combines all of the bad things about taxes into one big horrible terrifying smelly ball of abject fear.
I’m sure some of you are thinking, Americans are just too paranoid and we should learn something about taxes from our British brethren, but remember, the Brits are the ones who caused the problem in the first place.
Do you recall seeing this famous slogan on roadhouse walls?
“No Taxation Without Representation!”
Of course not, you weren’t born yet,
but you may have heard the term in high school during that high-speed, half-hour long American History course. The word “Tax” can be found right at the beginning of the slogan, ergo, it was tax that started the whole damn war for independence (just like the Civil War broke out when the North stopped being civil).
Oh sure, there are un-American American Historians who claim the British had nearly broken the King’s own treasury defending their American colonies during the prolonged hostilities of the French and Indian Wars. Those Historians dare to suggest that Parliament was merely requesting the colonies help pay for services rendered. But like their 21st Century descendants, many Colonists believed satan created taxes. They too believed in the existence of Morlocks (or Warlocks back then) and preferred to answer God's siren call to sacrifice the weak first, not to mention last and middle. Also, the Colonists were technically correct to argue that while Parliament may have saved their colonial asses, Colonial America still couldn’t vote for the guys who saved their aforementioned behinds. At the very least, this hurt the Colonists' feelings, so according to Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann (I still get them confused) the Colonists tossed a bunch of tea bags into a harbor somewhere near in Manchester, New Hampshire and drank every drop until the entire British fleet was stranded on a sandbar and Charles Cornwallis immediately surrendered to Ronald Reagan.
Some un-American American Historians blame the whole Revolutionary shootin’ match on the actions of the British East India Company as if corporations have ever had a major say in our democracy – so silly I won’t even grace that theory with an answer since I have no answer at the moment. Personally, I’ve never heard of The Opium Wars, The Bengal Famine or The Tea Act, all allegedly triggered by the aforementioned company, therefore, I have no idea what they have to do with a patriotic corporation or the Boston Tea Party. Like any American distrustful of those with knowledge, I don’t care. All I know for sure is that Boston should never have sold Ruth to the Yankees and you can be darn sure the Redcoats knew it at the time.
But I digress. The bottom line is, we Americans don’t like taxes AND we don’t like representation. We know that in real America, only the strong and adaptable survive. That’s the very definition of Creationism and the reason monkeys need to be arrested at our ports and prevented from stealing jobs in the Tennessee legislature.
I long for the good old days when a man could club to death his competition without “Johnny Law” interfering with his God-given States rights, or hunt down his prey at the front door of his State university without the 101st Airborne pointing M-1 Garands at him. I long for the day when a man can once again drag a buffalo and his wife back to his own man-cave where one of the two draggees dutifully tends to the sangria.
I say it’s time to man-up and stop paying up, just like our corporate forebearers learned to do and continue to refine.
In this darkest of hours, we should take a moment for reflection and remember how our ancestors laid down their lives at the Bridge to Nowhere and Lexington Speedway. Thanks to those brave tax rebellionators of that century back whenever that was, today, we can take the Interstate to NASCAR events and no longer worry about being eaten alive by roving packs of velociraptors.
As Thomas Paine once said of our federal tax laws:
“I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so (pay) because some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and like, such as.”
Wise words, indeed.
And as Jay Leno once said (perhaps aware of the double irony of ex-beauty pageant contestants Palin and Bachmann):
"Isn't it a little ironic here? We pick politicians by how they look on TV and Miss America on where she stands on the issues.”
Now that’s a taxing thought if I ever heard one.