[Buddha-l] NYTimes.com: Let Us Pray for Wealth

[Richard Hayes]

On Sunday 04 November 2007 10:22, Franz Metcalf wrote:

> Paying my taxes is indeed a beautiful, and
> highly Buddhist, act. 

This was how I felt about paying taxes when I lived in Canada. I actually 
loved paying taxes, knowing that the money went to fund an excellent 
health-care program in which every resident was fully covered, a system of 
higher education in which tuitions were affordable to almost everyone, and a 
military most of the members of which wear blue UN helmets and the rest of 
whom help people recover from floods, ice storms and other difficulties that 
nature throws at denizens of the planet earth.

Since coming to the United States, I have come to regard paying taxes as an 
act of treason, not to mention a violation of every Buddhist principle of 
which I am aware. Most of the money raised by taxes from everyone but the 
wealthy is used to help destroy not only this country but several others. 

Stan Ziobro bristles at the tiny amount of tax money that goes to paying for 
abortions, a procedure of which he disapproves. I bristle at the huge 
percentage of everyone's tax money that goes to pay for the storage of 
completely unnecessary nuclear warheads, the gratuitous and illegal invasions 
of other countries, the illegal detention without formal charges or the right 
to trials and often the torture of people suspected by one man to be 
potential terrorists, and the systematic shredding of the country's 
constitution. In this country, if one is not in prison for tax evasion, one 
should hang one's head in shame.

Hanging my head in shame,
Richard

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes