I decided that I’m going to go to a local April 15th Tea Party protest in Overland Park, KS. When I first heard about the protest I thought the organizers were going to include support of the Fair Tax, and since I don’t support the Fair Tax in one bit I decided that I wouldn’t attend. However, after doing a little more investigation I realized that tea party was not going to be a Fair Tax rally, and now I’m going.

I wrote an email to another Objectivist in town, and since it almost constitutes a fun blog post I thought I’d include it here:

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I’m not so concerned with Fair Tax supporters being at the protest as much as I am with Fair Tax supporters organizing the protest and turning it into a Fair Tax rally. I think the Fair Tax is, in some ways, much worse than the crazy tax system we have today, and it’s not something that I want to support. Nor do I want to lend Ayn Rand’s name to their cause (as if it were mind to lend). I listen to the Neal Boortz show regularly (Boortz cowrote the books on the Fair Tax), and I think they’re trying to take advantage of the good, honest anger that people feel about what the government is doing to our economy in order to push their fake cure, the Fair Tax. I’m not concerned now that I know that the Fair Tax supporters are actually going to be doing their own thing on the JCCC campus.

If I were to write out the Fair Tax scenario I had in my head, it would be something like this:

FAIR TAX ORGANIZER: We have to stop this mindless regulation of the economy!

ANGRY CITIZENS: Yeah!

FAIR TAX ORGANIZER: We have to get the government out of the economy and our lives!

ANGRY CITIZENS: Yeah!

FAIR TAX ORGANIZER: We have to put the government in its place!

ANGRY CITIZENS: YEAH!

FAIR TAX ORGANIZER: Ok, so now that we all agree, here’s what we’ve gotta do! First, we have to repeal the 16th amendment! Then we’ll get rid of the federal income taxes and start up a 30%…. ERRRRRR 23%……… sales tax on everything you buy! Then we’ll form a government committee to determine how much tax dollars an individual would have to spend to buy the “basic necessities,” and then we’ll deposit that amount in a special government bank account every month, and then we’ll send every citizen their own debit card that they can use to get their government money! Then all companies will flock to the United States, the government will still have the same amount of tax dollars to spend (if not more!), and the poor won’t have to pay any taxes at all! Say it with me! Fair Tax, Fair Tax, Fair T……

ANGRY CITIZENS: ????????????????????????????

Usually every morning I check the Neal Boortz show’s program notes. He calls them “Today’s Nuze,” and the most recent version can be viewed here.

On his show notes for October 8th, 2007, he had a small quiz to see if readers could identify the source of a number of anti-capitalist quotes. You can read the quiz here, or read the quotes in the quote below.

“We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

“It’s time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few…and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity.”

“(We)…can’t just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people.”

“We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own…in order to create this common ground.”

“I certainly think the free-market has failed.”

“I think it’s time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched.”

The source, as he identifies, is Hillary Clinton.

Boortz makes another great point about another Clinton quote in his notes:

Several weeks ago Hillary the Hideous loudly proclaimed that “privatization isn’t the answer to anything.” As I said at the time, this means that Hillary Rodham must think that government is the answer to everything … including education.

I listened to the Neal Boortz show yesterday. A self-described liberal woman called the show to discuss socialized medicine. Neal explained when she claims that someone has a right to the services of a doctor, that doctor has legally lost a portion of his time, money, and life. Her reply to him was so bad I had to quickly open notepad and write it down. She replied:

“That’s an ugly way to put it.”

She later said that it sounds so much better if you just say that you believe people have a right to health care. She also said that she wished she was smart enough to debate it with Neal and that if we have a right to education and legal council, why not health care? Near the end of her call, she admitted that she “thinks more with her heart instead of her brain.”

This phone call reminded me of a debate I had with my sister in my pre-Objectivist days. The subject of public education and roads came up, and I was (unfortunately) the person who was arguing for them. I gave all of the default answers, trying to explain to my Objectivist sister all of the benefits society receives by having the government take care of them. She didn’t convince me that I was wrong that day, but she knocked a lot of holes in my arguments for me to try to fill later. As I thought more and more about it, I realized that I couldn’t claim that I was for people being free to live their lives and at the same time be an advocate for forcing people to do something. The inconsistency between the two positions was something that I had to resolve by picking one or the other. I couldn’t have both.

I’ve debated proponents of socialized health care, and many of them treat the issue the same as this woman did. When they as confronted with the fact that what they advocate can only happen by taking from somebody else, they’ll admit that it doesn’t sound good but then they stop. They don’t continue on and choose one of the two incompatible positions, freedom or non-freedom with the illusion of “free” health care. They just float between the two. It seems that half of the battle for free-market health care is to get people to be intellectually honest. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. You can’t have freedom and have the government forcing you to make the right decisions in your life.

I don’t know the woman who called the show beyond what she said during that call so I probably don’t know at what stage she is in her thinking (though, I think I might be able to make a good guess). I can say, though, that Neal exposed the inconsistency in her position in the same way my sister exposed mine. I hope it was enough to make her think long about what she really is advocating.