Biblical Blunders and Marxist Echoes in NH Tax Debate

By Tom Luther

I continue to think out loud while the litigation of the Volinsky retirement plan and legislative changes to education are being finalized. I gave a second reading to The Last Bake Sale to fully explore my opposition to the arguments presented.

Having previously rejected his attempts to link racism, segregation, and civil rights legislation to education funding, I come to a more troubling part of his argument.

He explains the NH tax history in terms that cast property tax as substantially identical to income tax. He makes no secret of his desire to impose an income tax on NH. What is surprising is that he paints income taxes as a tool to redress the racism he finds in education. I have heard many arguments for the greater good, but never once have I seen someone try to defend imposing income taxes for their ability to redress racism. It’s a stretch, to put it mildly.

In addition, he attempts to convince the reader of the acceptability of income taxes with a glaring biblical falsehood. The full quote is in brackets below:

[Perhaps the tax philosophy was influenced by the New Testament, Matthew 25:15 (“from each according to his ability and to each according to his need”). Of course, this is also Marxist theory, but don’t tell anyone.]

A cursory glance at numerous translations of Matthew 25:15 reveals a market-capitalism translation: variable compensation based on contributions. The Parable of the Talents has many variations, but not one of them informs Marxism. Substantially all of them are opposed to Marxism.

I find this troubling because it leaves me with two possible explanations for such blatant butchery of the truth. Does he admire Trump and consciously emulate his “bigly” contentious and confrontational style? Why would he conflate Christianity and Marxism while bastardizing a biblical reference? Is this just offense for the sake of publicity?

The second possibility is even worse. He wants an income tax so badly he is willing to invoke religious conflict to get it. War is politics by more violent means, to reverse the paraphrase. He plainly is willing to risk civil war to impose an income tax. Odd approach for a lawyer pretending to champion civil rights.

I suspect that his politics are so centralizing and communitarian that this may be a Freudian slip of the typewriter; he may be such a communist that he can’t resist quoting Marxist theory, even when communism is nowhere in sight.

In contrast, I will close with two quotes from F.A. Hayek’s Individualism:

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means, as De Tocqueville described it, “a new form of servitude.”

With this in mind, I no longer see Volinsky as an education funding reformer. Misguided, confused, a constitutional wrecking ball—yes, all of the above. But up until this point, I was willing to yield to reasonable doubt. No longer.

I now see him as fundamentally agnostic with regard to education. This is someone with a crowbar breaking into the constitutional house. He did not choose education because he cares, any more than the thief chooses the window out of love. He chose weakness. This is a single-minded attack on the NH Constitution. All politics, all the time. The kids are casualties in his war for power to redistribute other people’s money as he sees fit.

Just as Trump said he was going to build the wall if elected, so does Volinsky commit to imposing an income tax—by any means necessary. This is not a misguided sheep. This is not a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This is a wolf. Take him at his word. He wants an income tax in NH. He will let nothing stand in his way.

A final quote from Hayek to show just how fine the line is between good and evil:

“The true democratic principle,” he wrote, “that none shall have power over the people, is taken to mean that none shall be able to restrain or to elude its power. The true democratic principle, that the people shall not be made to do what it does not like, is taken to mean that it shall never be required to tolerate what it does not like. The true democratic principle, that every man’s will shall be as unfettered as possible, is taken to mean that the free will of the collective people shall be fettered in nothing.”

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Blog post contributed by Tom Luther