The most unpatriotic woman in America, Michele Bachmann, is starting to get all loud and obnoxious again (she goes in cycles, like red tide and bad influenza years). Now she is saying that if a health care bill is passed under certain procedures that she happens to not like, it should be ignored, and American Citizens should not pay their taxes.
In the following video, skip forward to about 19 minutes and listen for about two minutes or so to get the gist. Also, see this writeup.
Hat Tip Ana
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While I certainly do not support this motive, civil disobedience is a time honored way to make a point to the government that people feel a certain policy has no legitimacy. As long as they are willing to accept the consequences of their actions, let them engage in the tactic of civil disobedience.
While Michele Bachmann is an obnoxious twit, I think you should concentrate on criticizing the “why” here rather than the “how”. Henry Thoreau refused to pay his taxes because he didn’t approve of the Mexican-American War and slavery. Does he fall in the same category as her?
Chris, all you have to do is look at the collection of Michele Bachmann’s assertions.
If Bachmann is even close to reasonable on this issue, it is only in the way that a stopped clock is right twice a day. There is not any reason to believe that she grew an intellect, a political philosophy, a thoughtful perspective or a moral code just for this speech.
Thoreau was one of the most thoughtful, eloquent, and erudite Americans of all time. Bachman is just an incoherent twit. Also, Thoreau willingly went to jail for his protest. Most likely, Bachman will tell her followers that they should expect to get off scott free for refusing to pay their taxes.
So no, they are not in the same category.
Thoreau went to Walden Pond to live a simple life, without excess possessions. I hear that his clothes were nonetheless nice and clean because some of the landowner’s slaves laundered them for him. I wonder if that’s actually true, and wonders if his boots were kept black and shiny for him, too.
I already received, completed and returned my census form. I encourage other US residents to do so.
I wonder how much in federal taxes her constituents actually pay, on average. Most of them would probably benefit more from health care reform than they would pay in taxes.
For some reason this reminds me of that pie-chart cartoon where the vast Christian majority is crying out “Help! I’m being oppressed!”
What has to be wrong with someone for them to want to pay three times more for something, or even die for lack of being able to pay for it at all, just to maintain some perverted sense of liberty?
Paul, Slavery ended in Massachusetts in 1783. Thoreau was born in 1817.
Walden is a complicated book. It is a book that covers a year of time but it actually represents a few years of his live, compressed and put on a seasonal round. He lived at Walden for about two years or a bit more, and there was certainly some of that time that he visited Concord and had meals and probably laundry at his friends houses. Walden woods was an experimene, and the history linked to the experiment is sufficiently complex that it can be mined for object lessons by pretty much anyone who is speaking to those who have not read the source material.
As D.C. pointed out in #5, Thoreau went to jail for not paying. Is it fair to expect that Bachmann and all of her supporters might do the same? That would likely mean a new congressperson from that district, at the very least.
Master Economist: Your arguments are so sound and powerful that I hereby promote you from Master Economist to Master Debater! Congratulations!
I want to know where Master Debater gets his figures from.
We don’t have to follow a Bill that’s not Law? Thanks, for the info Michelle. However, one would not want to appear churlish in pointing out that a Bill can’t be enforced precisely because it is yet to passed into Law, so let’s just ignore that minor aspect of jurisprudence.
Michelle is a hero and has the guts to stand up for what is right.
Some of you liberals are going to be the loudest whiners when the IRS is in charge of your HEALTH INSURANCE PAYMENTS and when you don’t get any, they will just TAKE THE MONEY.
If you don’t HAVE the money, they will just charge you MORE and put you further in debt or in JAIL.
YOU ARE ALL damned fools, thank you very much for voting in this communist Obama who hates America and Americans as much as he does!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dear NH,
You’re welcome.
Glad to have helped, NH. Maybe we can play poker together in the FEMA death-camps?
Listened to first minute. (Awful and wrong.)
Fast forwarded about 19 minutes. Had to stop listening after 10 seconds.