Right-wing hypocrisy: Redundant, repetitive, tiresome...and built to stay that way

An Oregon City man sent tax auditors defiant “arrest warrants,” secretly bought more than $5 million in gold bars and went to extreme measures to avoid paying income taxes, a federal prosecutor said Monday. All the while, at least some of the millions that Chester Evans Davis earned in the past dozen years came from the very federal government he is accused of cheating, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel…. “The evidence will show there was a double standard,” said Gabriel in his opening statement in Davis’ trial on Monday…. “While Chester Davis was perfectly happy to take money” from federal agencies that bought his company’s software products, the prosecutor continued, “he at the very same time refused to pay his fair share of taxes.”…. Davis, 56, faces 10 tax-evasion and related charges stemming from his failure to file personal income tax returns since 2000. He is accused of owing millions in state and federal taxes and of harassing and impeding those responsible for collecting it.

One of the things I find most offensive about the Tea Party movement is the pervasive “something for nothing” attitude. There’s too often a pronounced disconnect in their view of government, as if government is inherently evil…until something unfortunate happens and they need immediate assistance. Then they’re screaming first and loudest, demanding that government IMMEDIATELY leap to their defense.

They believe government grows on trees, and that taxes are an inherently evil usurpation of the fruits of one’s labors. They expect to drive around on highways paved and maintained by government, enjoy the rule of law guaranteed by government, and many other things…evidently without the burden of having to pay for any of it. They have no problem enjoying the benefits of the safety and stability provided by government, but they refuse to recognize a corresponding responsibility to pay their fare share. It’s beyond hypocritical…but then that’s a defining characteristic of the Tea Party.

I have no problem with people hating our system of government. What I do have a problem with is people who hate government and yet demand the protections and benefit provided by it. If you hate government, if you hate being required to pay your fair share, there’s a place you should check out. It has no government, no appreciable degree of law and order, and no burden of responsibility placed on its citizens. Yeah, Somalia’s beautiful this time of year…or so I’ve been told.

Chester Davis has benefitted financially from the very federal government he says he hates. He’s willing to take, yet he refuses to pay his fair share to support the very system he receives such substantial financial benefit from. I could discourse at some length about Davis’ epic, rank hypocrisy, but the truth is very simple and can be summed up very briefly. Davis is a common, garden variety criminal, a thief who cares only for himself and his own outsized self-interest and sense of entitlement. A few years as a guest of the very government he purports to despise is the least he deserves.

One way or another, there’s a price to be paid- a message that should be sent to Davis in no uncertain terms.

America doesn’t grow on trees.