Spending

In 1770 French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) wrote,

“On en trouve [l’argent] toujours quand il s’agit d’aller faire tuer des hommes sur la frontière: il n’y en a plus quand il faut les sauver.” (“Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed: when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so.”)

No truer words were ever spoken, and, unfortunately, what was true in 1770 is still true today. For eight years, our federal government borrowed money like a credit-card abuser and spent money like a drunken sailor (the latter simile attributable to Senator John McCain) to pay for a war in Iraq that nobody has yet figured out why we started in the first place.

Now we have a President who is trying to shift our priorities from “sending people to the frontiers” to “preserving them,” but THAT kind of spending is unacceptable to the thousands who gathered in “Tea Party” protests April 15th. We heard nary a peep out of those same protesters when Bush, et al. were running up the greatest budget deficit in our history because, presumably, the Tea Party people are infected with the same mindless jingoism that Voltaire condemned almost 240 years ago. Presumably they believe that spending to kill human beings is appropriate, but spending to help people to get back to work or provide them with affordable health care is not.

A few days ago I saw a bumper sticker on a pickup truck that read “I’ll keep my guns, freedom and money.” My guess is that the driver of that pickup truck believes that his freedom depends on his not paying taxes and using his gun to shoot anybody who tries to take his money and spend it on something “frivolous” like improving the human condition.

Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935) is supposed to have said, “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.” Justice Holmes was right. Paying taxes is patriotic, especially when those taxes are used for improving the quality of life instead of destroying life.