A Response to Dinesh D'Souza

Dinesh D'Souza's "parable"

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.)