Obama's tax nanny state: Oh so trustworthy! Oh what a hallmark of a free people! Tocqueville could once speak of an American system "not afraid to multiply municipal duties," and then to declare immediately thereafter that "Americans rightly think that patriotism is a sort of religion strengthened by practical service."
Patriotism for Obama, it seems, is unafraid to minimize municipal duties and weaken our practical ability to serve the most practical of our own political needs. But then we are also a long way off from the time when Tocqueville could also say:
In France the state tax collector receives the communal taxes; in America the township tax collector collects state taxes. So, whereas with us the central government lends its agents to the commune, in America the township lends its agents to the government. That fact alone shows how fear the two societies differ.
Freedom isn't efficient or convenient. And so Federal power, 'efficient' and 'convenient' both, creeps and creeps.
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