Paul Petrino was recently acquitted of income-tax evasion charges after he filed returns for 36 clients claiming that salaries cannot be legally taxed. According to Newsday, his defense was “based on arguments from the tax-protester movement, which questions the validity of the federal income tax laws.”
Every season there is a new contender for the conservative mini-treatise of the day. Usually written by the newest would-be Buckley, it offers readers a new way of understanding the ideological climate and a new perspective on how conservatives should fit within it. National Review used to publish these all the time in the 60s and 70s, and the conclusion was always the same: feel no guilt about your support of big government in such and such an area because conservative philosophy can be twisted and re-rendered to make that not only permissible but necessary.
For years people will debate the real reasons the US invaded Iraq. Was it an honest mistake, based on the belief that the Hussein regime was hiding weapons? Was it revenge for political disobedience? Was it about oil or regional control, Bush’s place in history, or bolstering the US military budget? Maybe it was only to satisfy the post-9-11 blood lust.
Given the mixed-up world of half-truths, lies, and duplicity that inhere in all war ambitions, these tantalizing questions may never be finally resolved, even by the most objective observers, of which there are few.
This speech was delivered before the annual convention of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, St. Louis, Missouri, October 26, 2000.
Pride may goeth before the fall, but with politicians like George W. Bush, far too much time separates the pride part from the fall part. The damage that he has wrought in this country and the world goes beyond accurate enumeration – most of it made possible because he has been able to use 9-11 to pose as God’s sword to smite his political enemies at home and abroad. He should have slunk away after 9-11, having failed miserably in his primary duty, but instead he used a crisis for personal and governmental aggrandizement. That’s the pride part.
Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis, William Bonner and Addison Wiggin, John Wiley & Sons, 370 pages
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Two hundred years ago, when the United States was a modest commercial republic, the president could take a walk down Pennsylvania Avenue—by himself—and talk to anyone who approached him. If he wasn’t on a walk outdoors, he was most likely at home, and you could speak to him by knocking on the door of the White House and presenting yourself.
