Legalized Piracy
To the editor:
Alexander the Great once captured a notorious pirate and was intent on executing swift justice upon him. Before the pirate was dispatched, the two men had the following exchange: Alexander: “Now that we have caught you, are you not ashamed of the life you have led? Before you are condemned, will you ask forgiveness from all those whom you have injured.”
Pirate: “I should not be punished and I do not want to be forgiven.You and I are doing the same thing. We are leading the same kind of life, only I am doing it in a smaller measure. I may rob a few individuals and trading boats here and there, but you are doing it on a national scale. How many countries you have conquered! How many lives you have needlessly destroyed! How many valuable treasures you and your soldiers have plundered! I tell you, it is you who should be ashamed, not I!” This Pirate had a point. The sin of theft is wrong no matter if it is committed by private citizens or governing bodies.
For several years in a row, the men on our Fayette County Commissioners Court have unanimously elected to raise our local taxes as much as the law permits without triggering an election. This is legalized piracy and old fashioned rebellion against the Tri-Une God who invented property rights. When God’s word says things like “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house” and “thou shalt not steal” it assumes the unalienable right, which God bestows upon people, to keep what He has given them. And God’s Word makes no exception for governing bodies who wish to steal from their citizenry. Thievery is always wrong.
When tyrants use the strong arm of the law to beat down and rob the people they are supposed to protect, they would do well to remember that Heaven’s High-King has something to say about such thievery. “Do not be deceived” says the Apostle, “Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy…will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:910 emphasis mine).
The men on our court have added lies and deception to their thievery. In a politically conservative area like Fayette County, where the vast majority of voters confess to be some stripe of Trinitarian Christian, politicians only win elections if they campaign on the magic words: “Lower taxes.” But there is not a man on the court, including the judge, who ran an honest platform of “Vote for me! I’ll increase taxation every year to max capacity!” To a man, they all promised “lower taxes.” But there is not a man on the court who has cast a vote to keep this promise. We read year after year in The Record the following phrase which exposes them all: “unanimously voted.” I’m not calling them liars and thieves. I’m just pointing out that they have been lying and thieving. If they desire to be truthful men who keep their word and keep their hands off other peoples’ things, then they can easily prove it by giving heed to the next paragraph and I will publicly praise them in the following week’s paper.
I urge the men on the court to publicly apologize to the citizens of Fayette County for continuing their long practice of thievery through taxation; what Judge Mueller has called “sheering the sheep” – a clever quote coined by none other than Tiberius Caesar, one of history’s great tyrants. I urge the men on the Commissioners Court to repent of their thievery through taxation, restore true liberty to our county by protecting, not pilfering, people’s property. I urge them to consider letting residents vote to set a low fixed tax rate that cannot increase until the return of Christ. This would ensure that when the court sets a budget for spending they would have two great options: 1. Spend more efficiently… something they don’t need to do when they can just raise taxation at whim. Or they could 2. Raise tax revenue by ensuring the prosperity of Fayette County residents. What a novel idea! A local government chiefly concerned for the prosperity of their citizens… not the prosperity of their own salary. It is no coincidence that a tax hike corresponds to an indiscriminate, county-wide, pay raise for county employees. All this in a time where inflation is laying into local citizenry like, well, like local politicians that continue to raise our taxes.
Our founding fathers fought the War of Independence on the idea that there ought to be “no taxation without representation.” How much worse is it when we experience ever increasing taxation from our local representation? Enough is enough.
Will Martin La Grange