Why it is your duty to stop supporting the government → how tax resistance fits the bill → isn’t some government worth paying for? → can libertarians, peaceniks, anarchists, environmentalists, paleocons, and lefties get along? → left/libertarian alliances

So I took a bit of a spontaneous vacation from The Picket Line to take care of some things off-line. Some of what I was up to was working with some people who are planning a protest action for  — I’ll have more on this later, when there’s more solid news to report.

The protest is a coordinated effort of a group of war tax resisters and an assembly of groups that have organized around opposition to the war in Iraq and to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The groups have some ideological and style differences, but are putting those aside and working well together so far.

I’m trying to push this incipient solidarity even further and see if we can also bring in the local Libertarian Party activists, who also traditionally do an demo. It’s an uphill battle. I haven’t been very successful at convincing the leftish core of our demonstration planners that they have much in common with the Libs — and I haven’t even started trying to convince the Libs that they’d be interested in going to a protest organized by a bunch of lefties.

Myself, I see a lot of advantages in such an alliance, but I’m not the one who needs convincing. The local Libertarians are a small group that barely registers on the political radar. They might gain from an alliance with the much larger leftish coalition. Also, if they crafted their message well, they could reach out to and influence a Left that libertarian activists have sadly abandoned in recent years.

(I’m not the only one to mourn the stubborn association of libertarianism with the American right-wing. For instance, there’s been a discussion over at Liberty & Power this week on the subject.)

The San Francisco peacenik left could also gain from such an alliance. We often talk about bringing a broader group of dissatisfied Americans into the active opposition, but if we can’t even reach out to Libertarians — who are already with us, by and large, on the war and aid-to-Israel issues, and who have already given up on business-as-usual — what are the odds we’ll ever reach Joe Sixpak?

And for that matter, the libertarian critique of coercive state power is a good one and the Left would gain from confronting it honestly, addressing it well, or (dare I hope?) adopting it for its own. Too many people on the Left think that the state is on our side — that it can be tamed and turned into our defender and our helper. In all times and all places, the state has been a mechanism to give money and power to unethical people who already have more than their share — it’s about time that the Left recognize that the state isn’t their friend and isn’t going to be.

(As a tax resister, I’m also interested in reaching out to the Libs because they seem like good candidates for tax resistance — they already hate taxes but might benefit from a little practical assistance in learning how to put their money where their mouths are. The leftish war tax resistance movement knows what it’s talking about in this regard, and libertarians would be smart to listen-up.)

A friend read my Picket Line entry from about why libertarians are frequently caricatured as ideologically rigid, self-centered greed-heads, and to what extent this caricature is a hard-earned reputation and to what extent it’s a stereotype. He asked why I hadn’t given up on libertarianism yet:

I told him that there were two reasons I haven’t given up on libertarians yet: 1) The lefties can also be a bunch of difficult-to-get-along-with people (in other words, mavericks and freaks like me) with simplistic political views — if I can’t get along with libertarians or lefties, I’m gonna get mighty lonely on the barricades. 2) The folks who most seem to “get” what I’m doing with tax resistance, culture jamming, and such have been from the individualist anarchist and libertarian traditions: folks like Wendy McElroy and Claire Wolfe, for instance.

If the libertarians and the lefties are ever going to start working together, it will be thanks to groups like Green Scissors. “, the Green Scissors Campaign, led by Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense and U.S. Public Interest Research Group, has been working with Congress and the Administration to end environmentally harmful and wasteful spending. Working to breach party lines, the Green Scissors Campaign has helped cut more the $26 billion in environmental wasteful programs from the federal budget.”

Cut government spending and help the environment? What’s not to like?

The libertarian on-line magazine Liberty For All has a good profile of war tax resister Karl Meyer.

The author spends some time during the course of the profile talking about the different perspectives of “progressive” activists and “libertarian” ones, trying to bridge the gap and wondering what each can learn from the other.

Joey King reports from the Cumberland Greens Bioregional Council Winter Gathering about his efforts “to network with groups outside the Libertarian Party in an effort to build coalitions.”

Karl Meyer, a nationally known war tax resister with the War Resisters League, spoke on the need to deny the government one of the things it needs most to conduct war… income tax dollars. He also wanted to publicize the fact that 5000 National Guardsmen and Reservists have failed to report for duty. Again, his words mirrored many Libertarians. He is speaking at the Libertarian Party of Tennessee’s state convention this year.

“If progressives fail to resist militarism… through the one form of participation that is demanded, that is to pay taxes, they should give up their pretensions to being in opposition.” ―Karl Meyer

One of my frequently-voiced wishes here at The Picket Line is that the anti-war leftists and the anti-state libertarians come to realize that in the U.S. government they have a common enemy that they should fight together.

The latest Journal of Libertarian Studies has an interesting article about how this happened during the Vietnam War, when principled libertarians like Murray Rothbard turned their backs on cold-war militaristic U.S. conservativism and (holding their noses) joined forces for a while with the anti-war, socialist left.

Rothbard’s own story of how he found he could “move from ‘extreme right’ to ‘extreme left’ merely by standing in one place” is given in a essay he wrote for Ramparts: Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal.

Regular Picket Line readers will know that from time to time I indulge a fantasy in which anti-war progressives and their libertarian counterparts come to be less mutually suspicious and more united in opposition.

I think both camps have a lot to learn from each other. The more leftish sorts have a long history and folklore of coordinated protest and activism which could give a lot more punch to the less-activist libertarians. And the libertarians have a more-consistent and well-integrated critique of the government than the progressives, who should know that government is always a tool to take from the people who don’t have power and give it to people who already have more than their share, but who can’t seem to resist the temptation to think they can shake hands with this devil and make it serve the cause of good.

So today I’ll note a couple of encouraging signs of dialogue:

Lew Rockwell, who is well-known in libertarian circles and is the founder of the staunchly free-market Ludwig von Mises Institute, crossed-over and spoke at a peace rally sponsored by the progressive Alabama Peace and Justice Coalition.

This earned him furious denunciation from the right-wing:

With its foam-flecked denunciations of the United States for “the evil of imperialism, the immorality of enslaving a foreign people, the malice of colonialism, and the intolerable brutality of authoritarianism,” its paranoiac allusions to a dissent-crushing “state,” and its unelaborated call for “resistance,” Rockwell’s speech could have been given by any of the more literate ringleaders of the anti-war left.

Libertarian Stephen Gordon was at the rally, and publishes a picture on his blog of two protesters holding signs reading “Libertarians ♥ ☮” and “Make Money Not War”. He writes:

The point of greatest applause may have been when one of the speakers (not Rockwell) spoke about tax resistance. Thoreau was the obvious topic of conversation I had with many leftists attending the rally following this comment. The ensuing conversations certainly opened the door to at least some liberals and progressives reconsidering their devotion to big government.

The LewRockwell.com blog has been a good source of libertarian anti-war commentary, and they regularly publish dispatches from progressive anti-war celeb (and war tax resister) Cindy Sheehan.

I’m happy to see that Sheehan is going to be helping to build this progressive/libertarian bridge from the other side by speaking at a fundraiser for LewRockwell.com.

“Debra” of The Claire Files writes that as a libertarian critic of government, she got used to being called a right-winger back in the Clinton years, and she’s getting used to being called a lefty today. And sure enough, when the lefties were playing Clinton apologists, she spent more time with the right-wing critics, and nowadays she’s spending more time with folks on the left, even though she holds “the same convictions as [she] had in the Clinton years.”

Of her new strange bedfellows, she says:

The biggest thing about the Left: they seem to be more willing to make personal sacrifices for their principles than the Right is. Whether it’s paying a premium for “fair trade” coffee, refusing to eat animal products, or bicycling to help the environment, they do instead of just talking about it.

Over the last several years, I’ve watched libertaria swing leftward, revolted by the Dubya Squad and the Republican establishment. Wouldn’t it be nice if in the ensuing cross-pollination the liberals got a little more skepticism about government and the libertarians got a little more serious about putting their money where their mouths are?

The head of the Monterey Libertarian Party writes about his attempts to bridge the peacenik / tea-party gap at Libertarian Peacenik.

A few counter-protesters attended on the other side of the street. Ironically, they came because the local Peace Calendar had sent notices to protest the event — yet Libertarians for Peace [which helped to organize the local Tea Party] is a member of the Peace Coalition that runs the Peace Calendar.

We knew some of the counter-demonstrators from past antiwar demonstrations. We crossed the street and distributed antiwar literature to them, stressing that antiwar and anti-tax people are natural allies. Some of them lightened up, and accepted our invitation to our side of the street. After all, we were embracing our principles with “End the War, Cut Taxes” signs.

Counter-protesters did not have a single antiwar sign, only placards that said they were “proud tax-paying Americans,” and Obama banners. One sign appeared to be pro-war, proclaiming: “Support the Troops: Pay Your Taxes.”

Over at Libertarian Peacenik, Thomas M. Sipos tells of the difficulties he had in trying to forge a left-right-libertarian Tea Party alliance.

The local Code Pink chapter was all for it, but the right wingers were more horrified at the prospect of joining forces with Code Pink and a bunch of Ron Paulites than they were enthused at the idea of building a more powerful and more broad-based coalition, so they backed out and the alliance collapsed.

There aren’t many issues I can think of that enthuse and inspire the American right-wing more than their mutual hatred for American liberals. American liberals can share this vice in reverse to some extent, but it seems more often secondary to their more substantial concerns. In both cases, though, it tends to lead to a stubborn refusal to reconsider ill-considered opinions (for fear such things might lead them to be mistaken for the cretins on the other team), and it divides activists in areas where they could and should unite, thus allowing those in power to fleece them more easily.

Some brief notes from here-and-there:

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

While I wasn’t paying attention the Conservative Political Action Conference met, nominated anti-war Republican Ron Paul as their preferred president in their straw poll, and held a panel on “Why Real Conservatives Are Against The War on Terror” that attracted 300 conferees.

But though the conservative tent has apparently grown big enough to cover the long-neglected anti-war, isolationist tendency, anti-war conservatives (like anti-war liberals) don’t really have a party to call their own, so if they want to make things happen, they have to step outside the tent.

Which they have: and who did they find outside that tent but some anti-war liberals and anti-war libertarians extending their hands in greeting.

Three dozen anti-war activists were there, ranging from progressives like Ralph Nader, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Sam Smith, Kevin Zeese, Bill Greider, Paul Buhle, Robert Dreyfuss, and Glen Ford; to libertarians like Dennis Lane and Jesse Walker; to conservatives like Doug Bandow, David R. Henderson, Kara Hopkins, William S. Lind, and George D. O’Neill. (I don’t have a complete list, so I’m just piecing this together from the bits and pieces of news about the conference I’ve been able to find on-line.)

Their goal was to build an anti-war coalition based on what they had in common: to put ideological differences aside and to talk about tactical coordination towards the common goal of a post-militarist America.

Here’s a take on the conference from Sam Smith of the Progressive Review, here’s a shorter note from Jesse Walker of Reason, and here is Kevin Zeese’s contribution to the discussion.

David R. Henderson gives a more complete summary, with a more complete guest list, of the recent gathering of people from across the political spectrum who want to create a broad antiwar movement that I mentioned .

It sounds like it was a fascinating meeting of the minds and that it went well. Henderson says, “I emerged with more hope for the antiwar movement than I’ve had in a while.”

Henderson has been working hard to establish and maintain a left/right/libertarian anti-war coalition in Monterey, California. It requires some delicate stitch-work, but is showing promise. I included some observations by Henderson about individual responsibility for state actions in a Picket Line entry , and also in We Won’t Pay.

That emerging left/right/libertarian anti-militarist coalition now has a homepage. There’s not much there yet (some more write-ups of the inaugural meeting from some of the participants), but there’s an RSS feed if you want to be notified when things get moving.

Paul Buhle, whose anti-militarist activism goes back to his time with Students for a Democratic Society in the Vietnam years, writes of the group’s first meeting: “There never was such a boundary-crossing event before, at least not in my 50 year political lifetime or any historical incident that I can recall.”

The first of the annual tax season war tax resister profiles are starting to hit the news. here’s one from the News & Advance of Lynchburg, Virginia (excerpts):

[T]here’s Lynchburg resident Larry Bassett. Unlike the Tea Party crowd, he doesn’t mind paying taxes. He realizes that the government is actually us and that it needs our money to keep running.

He just doesn’t want any of his money to go to the military.

“I’ve felt that way ever since the Vietnam War,” he said. “That’s what made me a tax resister.”

It’s not so much the military itself that Bassett objects to. What bothers him is the late 20th-century and early 21st-century trend of fighting surrogate wars on behalf of foreign governments. He doesn’t like the fact that America has become, in effect, the world’s bouncer.

“I like the idea of the military going into places like Haiti after the earthquake to help out,” Bassett said. “I don’t like the idea of killing civilians in some other part of the world.”

So, on a number of occasions over the past four decades, the University of Michigan graduate has made a point of giving his fair share to organizations that he does support, instead of contributing to the general pot.

There is this general conviction, no doubt encouraged by the federal government, that if we don’t pay our taxes, an alarm will sound somewhere in the halls of the Internal Revenue Service on April 16 and a SWAT team will be dispatched to our doorstep.

“For whatever reason, that doesn’t happen,” Bassett said. “I was hauled into court in Brooklyn once, and the judge told me I should get a lawyer, but the whole thing wound up being dropped.”

One reason, perhaps, is that the IRS doesn’t like a lot of publicity. Another is that most tax resisters are far from millionaires, and the amount of money involved is too small to be worth a lot of bother.

“I’m prepared to go to jail,” said Bassett, “but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Bassett may be disobedient, but he’s at least timely. He’s already sent checks out to several of his favorite organizations, including the local Meals on Wheels and a national tax resister’s group.

“Meals on Wheels just sent me back the standard note thanking me for my contribution,” he said. “A lot of organizations don’t like to acknowledge contributions from tax resisters because they feel it might alienate some of their other contributors.

“But they’ve already cashed the check.”

In Jerome Tuccille joined the libertarian exodus from Young Americans for Freedom and, along with other disaffected libertarians like Karl Hess and Murray Rothbard, tried for a time to find common ground with the radical left.

Tuccille’s exodus came complete with a manifesto: Radical Libertarianism: A Right Wing Alternative. In it, he lays out the case for radical libertarianism as being what the radicals of the day really want, if only they knew it, and for why people with “old Right” values — like small government, free enterprise, individual responsibility, and isolationist foreign policy — ought to give up on the government-loving, protectionist, imperialist conservative movement.

He also considers something that few libertarians of his time, and even fewer since, seem willing to: the role of civil disobedience and direct action in libertarian activism. As part of this, he advocates tax resistance. Some excerpts:

When the average American is compelled to work nearly two days a week for the so-called benefit of the “common good,” it is clear that not only the income tax but the entire taxing mechanism of the state is perhaps the next most serious [after military conscription] abridgment of individual freedom in our society. The time for a taxpayers’ revolt is long overdue.

Libertarians should undertake a program designed to throttle the taxing power of government on federal, state, and city levels. Picketing of revenue offices is only the first step. Harassment techniques should be employed: refusal to file income tax forms combined with putting forms in the wrong envelopes; formation of anti-real estate tax committees, anti-sales tax associations, anti-liquor, cigarette, and gasoline tax organizations to make the voice of the people heard loud and strong, not only during election years, but at all times; lending moral and physical support to those under indictment for tax evasion; passing out anti-tax literature at revenue offices; organizing anti-tax groups on all levels of society, from the lower-income minority ghettos to the affluent suburbs, and coordinating their activities for common ends, and so on. With the pay-as-you-go system now in effect, it is admittedly more difficult to resist the power of government looters. But a well-organized program can throw a king-sized monkey wrench into this totally inhuman taxing machine.

There are incidents in various sections of the country — Wisconsin, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Long Island — of successful attempts by taxpayers to keep their taxes from rising. In New Jersey and Pennsylvania landowners have banded together and are refusing to pay their real estate taxes; in Wisconsin and Long Island the voters have turned down an unprecedented number of school bond issues. This is a beginning. Hopefully, these successes are a prototype of things to come.

[T]he state cannot operate without politicians and politicians cannot function without money. For this reason, an economic boycott of the state is perhaps the most powerful weapon that people can employ in their efforts to rid their lives of the legal looting and murdering that is now being undertaken in the name of government. The concerted and organized withholding of tax revenues is the biggest and most frightening stick that the large American middle class can shake in the face of government. If such an operation can be properly organized and mobilized, the American people can succeed in breaking the back of coercive government and conclusively rid our society of state intrusion into the life of the individual.

These methods may sound drastic and extreme to many advocates of the libertarian philosophy. But if they are not put into operation — and put into operation now — the libertarian dream of a free society for each individual may well be destroyed while it is still in its gestation period. If we are to realize even a close approximation of libertarian justice within our lifetimes, we must begin now to take a more militant role in achieving it.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

  • Sheldon Richman has written a very good overview of left-wing libertarianism for The American Conservative.
  • Sylvia Boyes has been sentenced to prison for refusing to pay a fine. She was fined for her part in civil disobedience actions against the military and armaments establishments in Scotland. “As a responsible person I must act to bring about disarmament,” Boyes said. “A necessary part of that campaign is to carry out non-violent direct actions at military bases. No government can continue policies without the active or silent acceptance of its people. This includes the police and judiciary. So while I accept responsibility for my actions, I am refusing to pay fines as a further act of civil disobedience and am fully aware of the consequences.”

The issue of the anarcho-libertarian zine The Abolitionist carried an article about a “tea party” in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the National Taxpayers Union. The article is notable for showing how libertarian anti-tax sentiment and anti-war activism were much more closely allied then than now.

Reflections in a Polluted River

by John Brotschol

On , a number of RLA libertarians including myself went down to Washington, D.C. to attend a “tea party” sponsored by the National Taxpayers Union. The NTU’s brochure cites some impressive statistics to justify the creation of their group: each year Congress and local governments continue to spend 10% more than the previous year, right now, the taxpayer is spending 44% of his working time just earning enough to pay all his taxes and state and local taxes have risen 1700% (WOW!). The NTU hopes to mobilize enough support by the creation of local groups and cooperating with already existing tax groups to exert political pressure on politicians from Capitol Hill down to the local township committee to reduce taxation. The conference drew a relatively small crowd of 50 people but it was the best libertarian gathering, I have yet attended. The speakers included Ernie Fitzgerald who was fired from his position in the Defense Department for exposing the two billion dollar cost increase of the C-5A transport plane, Brad Lyttle of the War Tax Resistance, free market economist Murray Rothbard, author Harry Brown whose book “How you can profit from the coming devaluation” is currently on the best seller list, Karl Hess and WKCA radio commentator Jeffrey St. John. The speakers’ main target was the military industrial complex who they blamed as the primary cause for today’s oppressive taxation (over 70 billion dollars is allocated to the Pentagon). Brad Lyttle who gave one of the best addresses stated that his group is not paying telephone taxes (passed by Congress solely to support the Vietnam War) and income taxes in their attempt to put a dent into the war machine. The Executive Director of the NTU, James Davidson said his group will work closely with the War Tax Resistance people.

This conference brought home to me the excellent possibilities tax organizations offer to libertarians fighting both mic and its Vietnam War and the welfare mess. Here’s our chance to sock it to both liberals and conservatives, so let’s get in there and start pitching.