Hudgins rips taxes

Edward Hudgins, director of TOC's Washington office, was active recently in his opposition to the current tax system. At the National Press Club he joined a group of critics to speak out in favor of the true victims of that system—the most productive individuals in the country.

Hudgins maintained that we should lament April 15, tax day, as the day that too many Americans all too willingly surrender their liberty. All free individuals want to run their own lives and meet the challenge of discovering and creating the goals that will give them joy in life. Yet paternalistic politicians treat us like children who cannot earn our own way, raise our own children, save for our own retirement, or wipe our own noses without government help.

Instead of spitting on handouts from politicians and candidates, Hudgins observed that too many Americans applaud the handouts and re-elect the politicians who provide them. Yet they drag us further down into the depths of dependency. And taxes are the fuel that feeds this big government.

Hudgins urged those who reject this system to appeal to the reason, moral sense, and deepest sense of self-respect of their fellow citizens, to urge them to reject the Faustian bargain that in the end leaves us all morally as well as materially impoverished.

During the question period, Hudgins pointed out that we must reject the moral premises of those who argue for higher tax rates, especially on the "wealthy." He pointed out that individuals prosper because they are productive and that it is immoral as well as economically stupid to punish these individuals for their virtues. The so-called progressive tax system should be renamed "punitive."

Hudgins's op-ed on this subject was published that day in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and quotes from his speech appeared at the top of a UPI story about the meeting and were picked up in the online edition of USA Today. Radio and television covered the event as well.

Hudgins also has recently produced "Reports from the Front" on: "Special Interests or the Special Use of Force?" on politicians who denounce interest groups while granting them handouts and favors at the expense of others; "Black Like Me?" on John Kerry's insulting and paternalistic pandering to black voters; "Rebirth of the Spirit," in appreciation of the spring season; and "Grinding Humans into the Mud," on President Bush's using Earth Day to announce new limits on the use of private property. Hudgins also appeared on television on The Fox Report with Shepard Smith, commenting on a NASA project that took forty-two years to launch at a budget twenty times the original estimate.