Real — and real stupid — civil disobedience: Americans refusing to pay their taxes to spite Trump

Real — and real stupid — civil disobedience: Americans refusing to pay their taxes to spite Trump

When the liberal Left is not busy blocking vehicular traffic — which could soon come with a very high price — they demonstrate their opposition to Donald Trump’s policies by engaging in other, more productive pursuits … like coloring. As in coloring books. (Going outside the lines can give the protester a real adrenaline rush.)

Now a group of anti-Trump Americans has hit on a form of protest that is not only more adult but represents a genuine form of civil disobedience. In fact, it is the form of civil disobedience that got liberal icon Henry David Thoreau tossed in jail. Namely, some Americans are withholding their taxes this year, but not in the government sense of the term. Rather, they are refusing to send a check to Uncle Sam to cover their income tax burden.

The Guardian explains:

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

A nascent movement has been detected to revive the popularity of tax resistance – last seen en masse in America during the Vietnam war but which has been, sporadically, a tradition in the US and beyond going back many centuries.

The article names names. One of the scofflaws, Andrew Newman, is an associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York. He laments:

My tax money will be going towards putting up a wall on the Mexican border instead of helping sick people. It will contribute to the destruction of the environment and maybe more nuclear weapons. I think there will be a redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy elite and Trump’s campaign for the working man and woman was an absolute fraud. If you pay taxes you are implicated in the system.

Newman is on record saying he intends to pay his city and state taxes, just not what he owes the fed.

The article quotes Ruth Benn, coordinator of a group that encourages anti-Trump federal tax boycotts, as assuring prospective nonpayers that “there have been very few people who have spent time in jail for not paying taxes as an explicit act of political resistance.” Benn further allows as how she hasn’t paid federal income tax since 1982. Any IRS auditors out there might want to take notice.

What seems especially foolhardy about all of this is that many liberals are convinced that Trump will emerge as a tyrant. Shouldn’t these people, therefore, be afraid — very afraid — of testing the limits of the president’s absolute power?

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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