I’m not a Tea Partier, but I don’t see a whole lot wrong with their resistance to increased taxation. That’s not a question of “rendering to Caesar what’s Caesars” unless you think all wages belong to Caesar and he has a right to whatever portion of it Caesar sees fit. Do you? The Catholic Church certainly doesn’t teach that. I doubt yours does either, but perhaps you can cite where it does. We’ll see.
Concretely, now. How do you expect seniors to be adversely affected by tax rates staying where they are? Seniors are already the wealthiest single segment in this economy. How, exactly, are they going to lose if their tax rates don’t increase?
And very concretely, how do you expect the poor to be affected by the same thing? Do you really think increased taxes are going to be spent on the poor? What is this administration’s track record regarding the truly poor, that makes you think that? So far, it has all been middle-class welfare. Vote-buying.
I have only seen Tea Partiers on TV. Possibly some carried bibles, but I don’t recall seeing that. But I think some thought ought to be given to the fact that taxes don’t just come from nowhere. They come from people; people who have worked for their wages. I believe that nowadays, considering all taxation from all sources, people pay about half their wages for taxes already. Obviously, that reduces the amount they could spend on others who are more proximate to them than the uncertain group the government wants to benefit. And yet, oftentimes those who promote higher taxation don’t take into account that peoples’ “discretionary income” is where charitable donations come from.
You didn’t name your denomination, and perhaps you will do so still, but one really ought to think about the fact that Jesus’ exhortations were all and always to personal charity, not to statism. And the more the state appropriates, the greater is the propensity of government to reduce the churches to merely introspective entities that do no physical good for anyone, if even that. In those states wherein the government has done the most of that, the churches are shifted to the sidelines. Maybe in your church that’s viewed as a good thing, but in the absence of your disclosing its teachings to us, it’s difficult to believe that it does.
You know, they ones that threw rocks, bottles, and molotovs at police, bombed police stations, and the pentagon, etc… Is that the “nasty” that you are talking about? What acts of violence and domestic terror has this yet-to-be-identified “new right” done that even matches up?