Taxpayer Tea Bag Tax Protesters Cause More Taxes

I attended the Tea-Bag Tax Protest this April 15, 2009, by accident. I was on my way to conduct a little business with Uncle Sam at the Federal Building. While miffed that I couldn’t find a parking spot nearby, I had to admire the enthusiastic, mostly middle-aged, upper-income crowd exercising their freedom of speech. But it all seemed just a little pointless and a little too slick on the part of those using the protest for political grandstanding.

It’s like having a rally against death. After the Star Spangled Banner is belted to get great applause, who’s going to say you’re wrong when you deliver a diatribe calling upon Congress, the President, Mother Teresa and President Monson to pass a resolution banishing death and/or taxes for all time? And what counterculture is going to stand across the street and heckle you and plead for God to heap upon them more death and taxes? Yeah, it’s a no-brainer.

Consequently, although it looked like a crowd with which I didn’t agree politically, I couldn’t exactly tell them they were wrong. Instead, I just chatted with a few of them. Some were pretty level-headed and just took issue with the extent of taxation. Others, however, of the crackpot-Unabomber-vintage anarchist type, were of the notion that somewhere in some unknown land there has been a tax-free era of human history to which we must return.

For fear of being strung up, I didn’t mention I was about to advocate on behalf of a coal minor who, after twenty-eight years of arduous labor resulting in a worn-out back, mangled limbs and blackening lungs, was petitioning his government for social security benefits. Nor did I argue that ever since humans banded together in social societies there have always been "taxes." This is true whether paid in sweat equity while assisting in a communal hunt, pitching in to rebuild the neighbor’s home that was demolished in an earthquake, or paid in blood protecting our liberty. No, I just congratulated them for their concern and went on in to do my job.

When I was done and exited the building, the rally was over. The Taxpayer protesters had all left. They had all gone home in their cars fueled by gas secured by American taxpayers and paid for by too many soldiers’ blood. They drove over American taxpayer constructed roads, past taxpayer paid law enforcement officers while on their way to pick up their children from the taxpayer funded schools. The only thing left behind was dozens of tax protestors’ signs and their garbage – all to be picked up at the taxpayer’s expense.
Loren Lambert,
April 16, 2009©