A friend on Facebook posted a link to this video and commented, "Makes sense." I wrote the following suggesting why I don't think it makes sense.
In the interest of greater understanding, I wanted to try to
explain why I don’t think D’Souza’s arguments here make much sense. I’m only taking the time to do
this because I think his perspective is extremely helpful for getting at the
core of some of the important things you that have you and I (and millions of
others) in such profound disagreement about public policy issues.
Let’s take first his claim that the element of compulsion (when people are forced by the government
to pay taxes to help the poor) strips
the virtue from the act of helping.
(He uses the image or “parable” of Obama on a horse with a gun forcing
Peter to give his sandwich to Paul.)
While there is surely an element of compulsion in taxation,
the parable be uses exaggerates that element. Taxation is not one group forcing another group to
relinquish something against their will to a third group. Taxation is what and how we all decide
together to contribute to be able to do the things we think are necessary and
best done together. There is an
element of compulsion for sure, but it is only truly unjust compulsion or
oppressive compulsion when I am excluded from the process of deciding how we
tax and what we tax for.
Remember the charge of the American patriots against George the Third
wasn’t “taxation is compulsion,” it was that there was “taxation without
representation.” All of us have to
pay taxes for things we don’t necessarily think are justified. Let’s argue
about tax rates and government’s proper role. Those are legitimate and
reasonable things we have to discuss in a democratic society. The problem with parables like
D’Souza’s is that in misunderstanding taxation (and the element of compulsion
in it) it totally undermines the whole basis for taxation. Put differently, it
really makes ALL taxation suspect.
Is there, as he suggests, no element of virtue in the paying
of taxes as he suggests? Surely
there is none if his parable appropriately imagines what’s going on when
democratic societies tax, but as I’ve said, I don’t think it does. Understood as a corporate process
whereby we (through our democratically elected representatives) decide how much
we are going to pay to do certain things together, there is clearly an element
of virtue throughout the whole process.
Determining what tax rates are fair involves moral judgment; deciding
what things are appropriate for us to do together involves moral judgment;
willing and joyfully paying our taxes at the rate we have determined together
is appropriate, to enable us to do things we have determined together are
necessary is certainly virtuous!
In the context
of how I understand taxation (as how we decide what we are going to do together
and how we are going to pay for it, rather than as conceived in D’Souza’s
parable), I think there is a profound element of moral virtue in the current
debates. I think those who are willing to pay higher taxes to support programs
that are necessary to help poor people are displaying love and generosity.
Even though I think he’s wrong about the role of virtue in
taxation, I think I would disagree with him even if there was no virtue in it.
For me, the fundamental issues is not whether your and my virtue is expressed
in the process whereby the needs of the poor are met, but whether the needs of
the poor are met! I think about he
biblical idea of the jubilee from Leviticus. Every 50 years the land in Israel was redistributed
back to its original owners; debtors were let out of prison; slave debtors were
set free. It was not an appeal to
voluntary charity suggesting that making sure poverty did not become entrenched
was a good thing only if it was an
expression of individual virtue exhibited through voluntary. Rather, making sure poverty didn’t
become entrenched was a good thing whether the individuals who paid for it
liked it or not! Of course, I
would say, ultimately that the jublilee provisions were an expression of the
virtue of the Israelite community.
A second big idea I see here is the claim that taxation is legitimate to do things (like
provide for military) defense that help everyone. This
is D’Souza’s attempt to rescue his overall argument against
taxation/compulsion. Yes there are some things, he wants to say, that it’s okay
to force people to pay for, but those are only things that serve everyone (like
military defense) but not things like welfare programs which only help the
poor. He says that “robbing Peter to pay Paul (poor welfare
recipient) hurts Peter.”
At least robbing Peter to pay for military defense helps both Peter and
Paul and presumably that makes it legitimate.
I’ve already suggested that taxation isn’t robbery. But what I want to address here is the
assumption that when you and are taxed to help lift others out of poverty that
only hurts us. That strikes me as
complete nonsense. Of course, it
“hurts” me in the sense that I have less money in my pocket. But it doesn’t only hurt me.
All the evidence suggests that inequality is increasing and that upward
mobility for those at the bottom is minimal. What I think I am seeing, is that many, many
working class and poor folk are becoming more and alienated. The feel themselves excluded. They
don’t trust our institutions. They don’t think the society “works” for them.
They don’t see themselves as having a stake. They live in a completely different world from those of us
who are “making it.” (And I don’t
just mean the really filthy rich. I think the typical poor or working class
person in Madison Co. sees themselves as living in a different world from the
world you and I live in—with our college degrees, our professions, our relative
income security.) It seems
to me that all of our lives are diminished by this situation. It creates mistrust, crime, incivility,
etc. I believe my life and your
life will be better if we could change that, if poor and working class people
among us actually experienced upward mobility and a sense that the our society
“works” to meet their needs and sustain their aspirations.
Finally, just a brief word about D’souza’s wagon parable:
some (government, Obama) forcing others (you and I and the rich) to pull the
wagon (in which the poor ride.) He
says a couple of things in that context that seem foolish to me. He says people will conclude it’s
nicer in the wagon. OK.
Maybe there are some among us who would prefer to be dependent. But I think what the vast majority of
us want is a role to play in which we can use our talents and energies to do
something useful to others and to our communities. And, of course, we want to be able to make a decent living
and fair wage for playing that role.
Moreover, it isn’t as if we are ever going to provide a level of welfare
assistance that makes the wagon a cushy place. Personally, I think everyone should be guaranteed enough to
be able to eat, have a roof over their heads, and access to basic health
care. That’s a minimally secure
existence, but surely not one that many would say is ideal, not a wagon its
better to be in than outside helping to pull.
D’ Souza also suggests that liberals/Obama are critical of
“the wagon pullers” and believe in the “moral superiority of those in the
wagon.” I have no idea
where he’s getting that.
I suppose it’s always possible to find some place where some liberal,
even Obama has painted with such a rhetorically broad brush. What I hear isn’t rich people are
bad, poor people are good: but rich people are in a better position to make a
higher share of the sacrifices necessary to create a better society. And that better society isn’t one in
which half the population is riding in a wagon pulled by the other half. It’s rather one in which people are
empowered to become wagon pullers and the wagon gets increasingly less crowded!
If anyone is prone to making broad brush
moral judgments based on class its people on the right. In fact, D’Souza is
implying there are two kinds of people in the world: good moral productive
wagon pullers; and bad, lazy, immoral wagon riders. (Actually a third: liberals who force the good people to
help the bad people. They are even
worse than wagon riders.)
