The popular meme circulating throughout the “unbiased” media yesterday was: The original Tea Party was about taxation without representation but Americans HAVE representation and Republicans are just mad because they lost. The more I twist that in my head, the more absurd it sounds. What they’re really saying is: you are only allowed representation in government if you’re the majority.
Funny how that didn’t seem to be the case in California when Prop. 8 passed. I don’t remember any snide reporter telling a disappointed same-sex couple “Hey, you lost, get over it.” In fact, their protests have been covered by teary-eyed reporterettes (too young to remember Selma) as a modern civil rights struggle. (How is the right to keep your income and raise children free from debt not a civil right?) And the justification of majority Democracy gave no comfort to Prop. 8 opponents who went to court to overturn the majority.
When you champion the right of the majority to overtax the minority the rich will always lose. By definition, the top 5% of income earners can never expect to be more than five percent of the voting public. So the top five percent are always going to lose. This was the same strategy that allowed slavery in this country. Since the majority of Americans didn’t think it was wrong to enslave the minority, it was an accepted practice.
And lest you think I’m being hyperbolic with that argument: Taxation is involuntary servitude. When you work for money you don’t get to keep, it’s forced labor.
If you want to talk about taxation without representation, how about the millions of children who are not old enough to vote; the ones who have been saddled with thousands of dollars of debt in just the past hundred days of this administration? Certainly their voices should be heard, although it’s probably assumed Americans below voting age would have made the same childish misguided decision the Obamaphiles did.
It’s funny how Democrats only support democracy when it skews in their favor. Things like abortion rights, gun control, and nontraditional marriage, are just “too important” to leave up to the electorate. But when it’s a decision to limit salaries, ban smoking from bars, tax the rich, or any other thing the Left wants, populism rules.
American was not founded as a Democracy, we’re a Republic. There’s good reason our Founders were so suspicious of democracy — it’s too easy for the tyranny of the majority to abuse its power. In the immortal words of James Madison:
A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
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