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Texas congressman Dick Armey is talking up some pretty good ideas -- for
a Republican.
According to a recent announcement, he wants to cut federal income taxes
to a flat rate of 17 percent -- which is too much, but what do you expect? He
would allow generous exemptions: $10,000 for individuals, $14,000 for single
parents, $20,000 for couples, and so on, meaning that most people would wind
up paying that 17 percent on merely a fraction of their income. The best news
is that he would replace the hated Form 1040 with a postcard, and eliminate
tax-withholding altogether, something that would be extremely good for this
country.
But what is he going to do about Kay Bailey Hutchison?
Hutchison, you may recall, is the lady that conservatives were aflutter
over, who humiliated the Democrats by taking Lloyd Bentsen's Senate seat away
from them when he descended to the Clinton cabinet, and who survived what
amounted to an assassination attempt -- assault-lawyers at thirty paces -- on
the part of Governor Ann "Ma" Richards, more or less by staring the old crone
squarely in the eye and saying, "Let she who is without graft cast the first
aspersion."
Great stuff.
But when push came to shove, what kind of conservative, what kind of
Republican, what kind of Senator did Kay turn out to be? No better than Ma
Richards, really, who earned the contempt of everyone with an educated concern
for the Bill of Rights by vetoing a liberalized concealed-carry statute passed
overwhelmingly by her legislature. Bailey's first significant act as a United
States Senator was to join one-too-many of her fellow Republicans in voting
the Brady Bill -- primarily intended to reduce handgun purchases by women --
into law. Ironically, the old pre-Waco Bentsen would probably have voted
against it.
And that, of course, set the stage for Republicans to join the Clinton
Gang in its blatantly illegal attempt -- the Feinstein Amendment -- to outlaw
that very class of weapons most clearly meant to be protected by the Second
Amendment.
Now what, I hear you asking, does Hutchison's dimwitted betrayal of the
Constitution have to do with Armey's good-hearted, high-minded effort to help
Americans keep more of their income? Simply this: conservatives
frequently -- and erroneously -- assume that a free economy
is the same thing as a free country. Let no one doubt
my fervent desire for an economy less constrained than any Republican
can imagine, but what good is money if you don't have any rights?
Let me put it another way: the Bill of Rights is basically the only
thing that keeps America from becoming the world's largest banana
republic -- and there are plenty of banana republics that don't have
any income tax at all.
Or let me put it still another way, seeing as how Armey's proposal isn't
good-hearted or high-minded at all, but just a stab -- and a commendable
one -- at taking advantage of Bill and Hillary's loopy policies of governmental
greed and implacable hatred for individual achievement: most observers on
both sides of the ideological fence were quick to cite George Bush's broken
promise about taxes as a factor in his 1992 defeat; few of them
noticed -- or wanted to discuss publicly -- the fact that he lost by a
margin remarkably similar to the number of gun-owning single-issue voters
he had offended on several occasions.
All along, it was the Bill of Rights, stupid -- especially the Second
Amendment.
Ancient Rome had some odd institutions, among them the phenomenon of
wealthy slaves. I don't want to be part of that particular classical revival,
do you? Tell you what, Dick, make me an offer I really can't refuse. Before
you volunteer again to let me keep more of what was mine to begin with anyway,
why not try enforcing the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights? Each
and every article. Lock up -- that's right, arrest, indict, try, and
imprison -- those among your colleagues, Republican or Democrat, who attempt
to vote my liberties away.
I might take you seriously if you do that.
You may not remember, but it's what you promised to do when you took office.
Until then, I will continue to vote Libertarian -- and work as hard as I
can at persuading others to do the same -- even if in practical terms it means
seeing one slimy, repulsive, liberal Democrat after another elected to office.
To put that another way, it may be necessary to destroy the GOP in
order to save it.
And it's preferable to supporting a party that consistently demonstrates
treacherous disregard for certain basic civilities -- as embodied in the
first ten Amendments to the Constitution -- to which we all supposedly agreed,
so long ago.
My home on the web, The Webley Page: www.webleyweb.com/lneil/
My e-zine The Libertarian Enterprise: www.webleyweb.com/tle/
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