Ron Johnson's 72% Doctrine

Here's a paragraph from George Will's recent piece on Ron Johnson:

"The most basic right," Johnson says, "is the right to keep your property." Remembering the golden age when, thanks to Ronald Reagan, the top income tax rate was 28 percent, Johnson says: "For a brief moment we were 72 percent free."

Let's pause for a moment a consider the ramifications of this flaccid and callow comment.

The most obvious consequence of what Johnson is saying is that "freedom" can be measured by the amount one pays in federal income taxes. This would mean that one is only 100% free when one is not paying any taxes to Uncle Sam.

Since Johnson has stated that his campaign is going to about "freedom" I assume that, should he be elected to office, he will accept no salary and pay for his office expenses and staff out of pocket to ensure the complete freedom of his constituents. Obviously, no one in America can be 100% "free" until we are free from the shackles of taxes. If no one is paying any taxes, then there can't be any revenue flowing into federal government. If that's the case, Johnson can expects to run an office with a budget of $0.

Of course, it's not just Johnson's office that will suffer from a lack of funding. Other federal institutions will feel the crunch too, institutions that actually -- and according to Johnson, paradoxically -- defend Americans' freedom with the very money that apparently subjugates them, like the armed forces. Call us crazy, but since members of the military do far more actual defending of Americans' freedoms than "oppressed tax-payers" we think they deserve a decent paycheck and other minor things likes health care and body armor.

This is not the statement that comes from someone who is serious about the complexities of governance. If Johnson keeps up rhetoric like this he accomplish the impossible: actually making Russ Feingold look like a hawk when it comes to national security.

Here's the point: mature political philosophies don't come with such glaring inconsistencies. I'm not suggesting that a perfectly cohesive political philosophy be a prerequisite for holding office (in fact, we'd argue that a perfectly consistent political philosophy is impossible), but this is amateur hour. This is a statement as oblivious as Rand Paul's idiotic statement on the Civil Rights Act in so far as it simply does not comprehend the consequences of the policy being promoted.

This seems to be common trait among the tea party clique.