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Wednesday, November 08, 2006
The Gospel According to Saint
Marx
The catechism of taxation, and how the Left misuses
it
By Jerry Bowyer
After seeing the failure of
Washington-backed capitalist reforms in Latin America, I no longer think
a third way between capitalism and socialism is possible. Capitalism is
the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at
things through the eyes of Jesus Christ - who I think was the first
socialist - only socialism can really create a genuine
society.
- Hugo Chavez, Dictator cum Theologian, Time
Magazine, September 22, 2006
I can't find anything in any
religion anywhere, I certainly cannot find anything in the three-year
ministry of Jesus Christ, that says you ought to take health care away
from poor children or money away from the poorest people in the country
to give it to the wealthiest people in the nation.
- John
Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts, Des Moines, Iowa, October 9, 2005
A Biblical scholar once said that if you torture a text long
enough, you can get it to confess to anything. I thought of this as the
Left tried to drive a wedge between "values voters" and President Bush's
economic policies in the run-up to Election Day. Having learned that
little electoral success comes from insulting evangelicals, the
Democrats adopted the adage, "If you can't beat 'em, try to make 'em
join you."
The text I most often hear stretched on the rack is
the one in which Jesus tells a rich young "man" that he should sell all
he has and give it to the poor. The socialist hawk Christopher Hitchens
used this one last summer in an opinion piece in the Wall Street
Journal. His interpretation seems to be that Jesus is damning rich
people in general, and that hostility to riches implies hostility to
markets.
But this is an oft misquoted passage. "And a certain
ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal
life?" (Luke: 18:19) He's not just a rich young man; he's a rich young
ruler. Luke calls him an "archon," which my Greek/English lexicon
defines as "a ruler, a judge . a member of the Sanhedrin." The Gospels,
like all ancient texts written before low-cost book reproduction, were
written very carefully and avoid extraneous details. It seems a stretch,
at the very least, to use this story as a bludgeon against the
institutions of the marketplace when the author goes to the trouble to
tell us that the subject in question is not a man of the marketplace at
all, but instead a man of the government.
Actually, Jesus
encountered many people who had made their way in the marketplace. He
was friendly with a wealthy merchant (according to tradition, a tin
trader) named Joseph of Arimathea. They were so close, in fact, that
Joseph donated the chamber in which Jesus was buried. Throughout the
Gospels Jesus extols the example of the patriarch Abraham, whom the
Torah says was a very wealthy man. If Jesus had a problem with wealth,
where were the confrontations with the wealthy importer of metals? Where
were the condemnations of the wealthy sheikh?
The wealthy men
that Jesus does confront weren't men of pure commerce. There is the tax
collector, Zacchaeus, who actually does obey Jesus and sells half his
possessions in order to give definitively to the poor; there are the
money changers getting rich off their monopolistic franchises on the
property of King Herod's Temple.
This makes sense. First century
Judea was a kleptocracy all the way to the top. The quisling King Herod
was put there by Rome because he was such an excellent tax collector. As
such, Herod created a centralized system of plunder and control through
which he and his cronies could become very wealthy. There were some
places for honest commerce. Jesus' home town of Galilee was a hot bed of
entrepreneurship, which is probably the reason why so many of his
parables drew on the language of the venture-capital market of masters
and stewards. However, the closer you got to Herod (geographically and
socially), the tougher it was to be honest and rich at the same
time.
It's hard to believe that recent attacks on the religious
right in America are attacks on wealth itself. Where would the Left be
if George Soros had sold all his possessions and given those proceeds to
the poor? Where would John Kerry be if Henry John Heinz had done the
same a hundred years ago?
It seems more likely that many of
Bush's American critics are not really calling for the elimination of
all wealth accumulation, but more likely using (or misusing) these
passages for their rhetorical value in a battle over the president's tax
cuts. I'm afraid, however, that the Biblical tradition offers no more
succor to opponents of tax cuts than it does to opponents of wealth in
general.
One day, a left-leaning rabbi called my radio program
and announced proudly that although his congregation had many wealthy
members, they had opposed the president's tax cuts because of their
devotion to Judaism. I asked him for examples from the Torah that
endorse high taxes. He had none. On the other hand, I can think of lots
of passages that seem to treat high taxes with suspicion. When the
patriarch Joseph became the vice-regent of Egypt, we are told that he
imposed a tax rate of one-fifth on the income of Egyptian citizens.
According to the Torah, they "became his slaves." If a 20 percent tax
rate is tantamount to slavery, what about a top rate of near 40
percent?
Much later, shortly before the emergence of the Davidic
dynasty, the people of Israel asked for "a king, like the other
nations." The prophet Samuel warned that, among other curses, the king
would impose a tax of 10 percent on their incomes. The prophet was
right, of course, and the line of kings became increasingly heavy
taxers. One of them, Rehoboam, son of King Solomon, found himself on the
receiving end of a tax revolt. The northern ten tribes of Israel
approached him about reducing their unsustainably high tax burden.
(Let's call it "Proposition 10.") His older advisors urged him to cut
rates; his younger advisors urged the opposite. Rehoboam ignored the
gray heads and raised taxes, the northern tribes seceded, and the tribes
were never again reunited. Ultimately, they were carried off by the
Assyrian Empire; they are now known as "the lost tribes of Israel." This
is hardly a ringing endorsement of high taxes.
Do I think that
our modern tax code should be adopted from the Torah? Of course not. But
examining the Torah's teaching regarding kingship, power, and taxation
is a good starting point for anyone seriously trying to figure out what
Moses and the prophets meant when they used the word
"justice."
John Kerry's comment of a year ago that the Bible
doesn't recommend taking health care from the poor and giving it to the
rich [Nor does anybody! It's a straw-man argument] wasn't his
first in the faith-against-freedom vein. Months earlier he said, "I went
back and reread the whole New Testament the other day. Nowhere in the
three-year ministry of Jesus Christ did I find a suggestion at all,
ever, anywhere, in any way whatsoever, that you ought to take the money
from the poor, the opportunities from the poor, and give them to the
rich people. [Through their taxes, the rich give vast amounts to the
poor and there is no mainstream proposal anywhere that aims to alter
that. A straw-man again]"
Rereading the entire New Testament
in one day is a formidable feat [Sarcasm]. But it should come as
no surprise when Kerry tries to use the Bible to argue against the
president's tax cuts. After all, three years ago at the Democratic
National Convention, he tried to use the Ten Commandments against the
president's Social Security plan: "We believe in the family value
expressed in one of the oldest Commandments: `Honor thy father and thy
mother.' As President, I will not privatize Social Security." [A good
twist: A responsibility of the children suddenly becomes a
responsibility of the government!]
Of course, the same Moses
who delivered that commandment went on to establish a regime with a
heavy emphasis on private property - let's call it the "Old Ownership
Society." Jesse Jackson famously observed that Mary and Joseph should be
thought of as the "homeless," which placed the tax-cutting Ronald Reagan
in the role of wicked King Herod. But Jackson left out the fact that the
only reason Mary and Joseph were away from home in the first place was
that "A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should
be taxed."
Source
posted by jonjayray 7:32
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