It’s Not Your Property
As I watched the news coverage of the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, one thing I heard the insurrectionists say frequently was along the lines of “This is my property — it’s paid for by my taxes, and I have a right to take whatever I want or destroy whatever I want,” and “The Police should get out of our way — we pay their salaries.” This is consummate BS.
Some years ago, I was an executive with a firm that offered franchises for a certain business. At one point I went to a national meeting of franchisees and happened to share a cab with one of them from the airport to our hotel. This individual spent almost the entire cab ride complaining about how the franchise company spent money and that he and other franchisees should have a say in that, since it was “our money you’re spending.”
At last I explained to him that the money he paid — franchise fees and royalties were for his use of the company’s physical and intellectual property, and that that money was part of a relationship he had with the company that was laid out in the franchise agreement. The franchising company owed him nothing other than what was in that agreement, and once paid the money was no longer “his.”
The situation vis a vis citizens and government is much the same. We pay taxes and fees to the government as our part of an agreement to abide by the laws our elected and appointed officials devise. As in any contract, it is voluntary (if you don’t want to pay taxes, you can elect not to live in the U.S. or you can elect to pay a penalty instead), there is value received on both side (we get government services, the government gets the money it needs to serve and protect us), and it is governed by a contract (the laws of the land, from the Constitution on down). Once we pay this money to the government, it is no longer ours — it belongs to the government to do with what it needs to do.
Actually, the whole “public property is mine and I can do what I want with it” argument is specious and an excuse for behavior that the perpetrators know is wrong. If not, why don’t they go to their local parks department and take the sod and fertilizer they need for their lawns? Why buy guns — they could go to the local police station and take “their” guns. The list goes on.
No, these are not noble patriots reclaiming what is theirs. In a democratic republic, how you do that is by electing officials who agree with your views, and if there are enough of those elected, you’ll get what you want. Unless, of course, the officials you elect are narcissistic psychopaths, in which case you get what you deserve.
