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The Moral Case _For_ Taking Federal Matching Funds
by Michael Emerling
As a "matter of principle", Libertarian Presidential candidates have
refused to seek federal matching campaign funds. Taxation is theft and
accepting tax funds makes us party to the crime. By taking the loot, by
welcoming stolen goods, the Libertarian Party betrays the
non-aggression principle. We surrender our morality, integrity and
principles.
So we've been told.
This position is not merely wrong. It is the exact opposite of the
truth.
As Frank Chodorov observed, "Taxation is robbery." Government is funded
by legalized looting. Government has no right to the proceeds of
plunder. Nor does it have the right to "assign" or "transfer" the booty
to others.
Who has the right to this loot? The rightful owners. The victims of the
tax crime: those who earned and owned it. The tax payers.
Let's look at Libertarian taxpayers. How many Libertarians are there in
America today? No one knows. Libertarians don't like being counted or
registered by the State.
Individuals who believe that they have a right to their life, liberty,
and property; Individuals who know that their life is their own and
intend to run it by their own judgement; Individuals who value
voluntary relations and oppose force and fraud; these individuals mind
their own business and live their lives as they see fit. Their privacy
is their protection, so they jealously guard it. They live by the code
of liberty. They are libertarians, whether they know it or not. But
their way of life makes them invisible, uncounted and forgotten.
A few Libertarians organized to reclaim their rights to life, liberty
and property. They did so as a matter of self-defense. They called
their organization the Libertarian Party.
Today there are 9000 dues paying National Libertarian Party members in
America. And perhaps another 6000 local Libertarian Party members.
There are over 50,000 voters registered as Libertarians, even though
many states do not allow us to register Libertarian.
For the sake of discussion, assume that there are only 10,000
Libertarians in America. Assume that the average Libertarian earns
$30,000 a year. (Probably a low figure, with all the professionals and
computer programmers in the Libertarian Party.) A person earning
$30,000 a year is paying a minimum of $3,000 a year in federal income
taxes. Using these deliberately low figures, we can see that
Libertarians are paying a minimum of $30,000,000 each year in income
taxes. That's $2,500,000 each month.
Libertarians have a right to recover this money. Or authorize another
to recover it.
In light of this, let's reframe the matching funds issue:
1. "Do taxpaying libertarians have the right to authorize the
Libertarian Presidential Candidate to use the matching funds process to
recover taxes taken from them?"
2. "Do they have the right to authorize their candidate to use the
recovered taxes to fight the looters?"
An example from history might highlight the issue. During the
Revolutionary War, Francis Marion ("the Swamp Fox") organized a
guerilla army in South Carolina. Marion staged midnight raids, hit and
run attacks and sabotage. This frustrated the British officers and tied
up troops that might have been used to defeat Washington or Lee.
Marion and his men ran out of ammunition. So they raided British
armories, taking all the weapons and ammunition they could carry. They
did return the bullets to the British ... one at a time.
These British weapons were paid for by past taxation and the source of
future taxation.
Did the Swamp Fox have the right to seize and use the weapons against
the British? Or should Francis Marion have left them in the hands of
the enemy?