“As anyone who went through Ohio’s public schools should know, the American patriots of the day were not protesting against paying taxes. They were demanding to be represented by the government that taxed them, which is something quite different. What American patriots opposed was not taxation itself, but taxation without representation.
“Taxation without representation is not exactly a problem for wealthy Americans. They are represented by their local, state, and federal elected officials. They are also represented by campaign contributions, lobbies, and personal political access. Their problem, and the country’s, is that they are over-represented, and use their over-representation to ensure that the wealthy pay lower taxes than they should. If we must resort to analogies from the eighteenth century, then those who benefit from the Tea Party are not to be to compared to the American rebels. They are rather the lords of the British parliament, using superior political power to ensure that those in weaker positions bear the necessary burden of taxes.
“Patriots pay their share. To refuse to do so in a moment of need, which is just what the Republicans leadership did during the negotiations over the federal debt ceiling in July, is to abandon the nation rather than to serve it. The notion that the federal government ought to be starved of resources is not patriotism: it is right-wing anarchism, which corrodes not only the American state but the American nation.”
–Timothy Snyder, As Ohio Goes: A Letter from Tea Party Country
Snyder’s language calls to mind then-Senator Biden’s 2008 remark that paying higher taxes would be the patriotic thing for wealthy Americans to do.
