David Cay Johnston has published A Cosmic Visitor’s Take on Tax, 132 Tax Notes 83 (July 5, 2011):

In this column, his last for Tax Notes, Johnston suggests fresh ways to think about tax policy. …

We are abusing our child — which is to say we are abusing America — with all of the hate-filled, nonsensical, demagogic talk about tax that dominates one of our political parties and intimidates the other.

We have forgotten the wise words of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, who in his 1793 letter made the telling observation that “the revenue of the state is the state.”

We seem to think we can raise generations to hate tax, when hate is never a good emotion. We spread tax illiteracy, with no regard for how it undermines America, the liberties of the people, and the very idea of self-governance. If you doubt that, just remember the total disconnect between what the Boston Tea Party was about and what modern Tea Partiers say is their cause.

Tax is not a pleasant subject and never will be. Neither are the responsibilities of child care, like calming bedtime fears about imagined monsters lurking in the shadows. Parents who perform these duties, showing their love by their actions, make for productive adults, while those who shirk the unpleasant realities of parenting often discover what a nightmare a child can grow up to become.

We need to nurture America. We need to do the hard work of changing our tax system to fit the times, of comforting those afflicted by change, and conquering the imaginary monsters perpetuated by politicians consumed by anti-tax ideology and the pursuit of power. We need to remember all six noble purposes in our Constitution’s preamble, and we need to take care of our common property, forgetting neither our purposes nor our investments in the commonwealth.

Without taxes there is no America. Taxes are the foundation of the commonwealth, of the goods and services that make society work, and on which private wealth is built. Unless we build a sturdy foundation, we cannot prosper, we cannot remain free. Skyscrapers built on sand will fall.

Too few Americans know these simple truths. When too many fail to even care about them, our society will begin to die, until one day students will open a history text to a chapter that begins with these awful words:

The United States of America was. . . .

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