We are hearing much these days about the founders and their views on taxation. Many people who oppose “big government”, deficit spending, and taxation are warning against socialism. They argue that current tax policy amounts to a redistribution of wealth, that it is class warfare, that it is unconstitutional and against the original intent of the founders. This is a kind of ancestor worship.

Within the context of the American civil religion, there is ancestor worship. This is our reverence for the founders. We invoke them when we want to say that some public policy with which we disagree is taking the country away from the Constitution as crafted by the founders. (My guess is that if we were to speak to the founders they would tell us to think for ourselves. That is why they built processes for amendment into the Constitution.)

Ancestor worship is not unique to civil religion. Many traditional cultures revere ancestors. A fictional example can be found in the movie Amistad. The movie is about the trial of a group of Africans who commandeered a slave ship and attempted to sail back to Africa. Their captors brought the ship back to Boston and a legal battle for their freedom ensued. Cinque, the leader of the Africans spoke of his reliance on ancestors. He said: “I will call into the past – far back to the beginning of time – and beg them to come and help me at the judgment. I will reach back and draw them into me and they must come. For at this moment, I am the whole reason that they have existed at all.”

Later in the movie, John Quincy Adams utters his own prayer to his ancestors, the founders of the United States: “We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, our-selves. Give us the courage to do what is right.”

When we look back to the founders, we find something quite different from what the anti-tax, anti -government voices would have us believe, at least in the case of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, like all human beings, has his limitations. He was deeply wrong about race. However, that is another essay. He counts as an important founder because he penned the Declaration of Independence, was in communication with James Madison and others during the drafting of the Constitution, and served two terms as president of the United States.

He believed that government ought to be frugal and ought to avoid debt. He knew that people hate taxes and that government ought to tax people for new projects rather than add to the debt because taxes would cause the electorate to pay attention. Yet, he argued for flexibility:

“Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory. The general aim is, therefore, to adopt the mode most consonant with the circumstances and sentiments of the country.”

What is most interesting about Jefferson and taxation is his recommendation to tax the rich so that the less fortunate would not have to pay for government. This was a means of correcting economic inequality. Writing to Madison he said: “Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portion of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”

Moreover, Jefferson advocated a tax on foreign imports because this would affect mainly the rich. He expected that they would pay “cheerfully.” He expected the rich to shoulder the whole burden of financing the government. Writing to Thaddeus Kosciusko he said:

“The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied. – Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canal, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.”

The tax would be spent in peace time on “rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufacture, education, and other objects within each state.” He thought wars should be paid for within the years that they were fought and if that was not possible, then “a tax to the amount of the interest and a reasonable portion of the principal will command the whole sum, and throw a part of the burden of war on times of peace and prosperity.” He did not see the need for a military budget. Such would cause wars in his judgment.

Jefferson cherished” peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness.”

When we look back to our ancestors, at least to Jefferson, we see an expectation for the rich to carry the financial burden of government. As we look today at a federal budget deficit that threatens our current financial security and international standing in the world, it is clear that Congress will have to raise taxes. And since so much of the nation’s wealth is concentrated in so few hands, the rich will have to carry this responsibility. People who make billions of dollars on a Wall Street bet ought to be taxed at higher rates to help bring down the budget deficit. They ought to pay the tax “cheerfully” because the gamble that paid out in billions serves no social function. It produces neither goods nor services to the society at large. Their taxes would benefit the country.

Jefferson’s wisdom was to tax the rich. It is the right thing to do now. I pray our leaders have the courage to do what is right.

(Jefferson’s quotes from “Jefferson on Politics & Government: Taxation http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1330.htm)


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