Marshall, Jesus, and Obama on Taxes

          In 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy, because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”  Almost 200 years later these words still resonate.

          Destructive taxation is nothing new.  In Jesus’ day, Roman taxes on the people of Palestine were so oppressive, they caused repeated Jewish uprisings.  The subject of taxation comes up again and again in the Gospels.  Jesus did not advocate rebellion (“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s…”), but when his following grew, it caught the attention of the Romans.  Not willing to see this popular movement grow into a revolt, they killed him.

          Jesus was a man of peace, but he understood very well the consequences of confiscatory taxation.  The line “Give us this day our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer is a direct reference to the consequence of excessive taxation.  A farmer who was no longer able to pay his taxes lost his farm and therefore his ability to make daily bread for his family.  The many poor who had been driven from their homes by the Romans knew exactly what Jesus was talking about.

          In this Land of Plenty are we approaching the limit beyond which we can no longer bear taxation?  The Romans taxed their subjects to fund their military exploits.  One might argue that we do the same in this country, but a marked decrease in defense spending advocated by this administration defuses that argument.  Rather, the purpose of increased taxation in the United States is the funding of out-of-control spending programs it cannot afford.  ObamaCare, with its vast array of subsidies and mandates, plus a projected trillion dollars added to the federal deficit in the next decade, is the latest and most egregious example of this policy.  At the heart of it is a socialist ideology that equates justice with the redistribution of wealth, but is in fact a means to increase government control over an increasingly dependent populace.     

          Elections are the constitutionally prescribed means of reversing the tax and spend policies of Progressives in the Senate and the White House.  Conservatives see the elections in November as their best chance to regain the Senate.  But we will still have to contend with Obama and his extra-constitutional executive powers and his regulatory juggernaut for another three years.

          Can we wait that long?  Americans have not revolted against tyrannical government in over 200 years.  But history has a way of repeating itself.  Before we declared our independence from Britain in 1776, we had the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party in 1773.  Before the presidential elections of 2016 we have a rancher backed by gun-toting supporters facing down federal agents over grazing rights in Nevada.  The King of England sent troops to occupy Boston.  Will the monarch in Washington send the military to suppress the new freedom fighters in Nevada?