PETERSON| Death and taxes

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Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Obviously, no one likes death or taxes. Recent events make me believe that some people are crazy enough to prefer one over the other.

Last week, as a response to Obama’s budget and taxation policies, a nationwide “demonstration” was coordinated to express conservative displeasure with taxation, conveniently planned around the deadline for all American adults to submit their taxes.

Anyway, the whole “demonstration” was little more than 250,000 people in roughly a few hundred locations across the U.S. complaining about something that is a part of an obligation as a citizen of this country. A bunch of tea was thrown around, and the term “teabagging” was used more than it clearly should have been.

FOX News, who was the major force behind this publicity stunt, seemed to be using this opportunity just to advance whatever agenda it has, which is to draw right-wing people in for a ratings buffet and get the base riled up over a grassroots movement as natural as FieldTurf insulation.

Besides, what is there to argue over concerning taxation? Sure, there are government programs that need to be picked at, prodded along, restructured, phased out and/or terminated, but someone snapping their fingers does not make it so.

Those who talk of secession from the union over government spending is ridiculous when they should know full well that any major government program takes many years to dramatically affect the populace, except in terms of national security.

Expressing your opinion when it disagrees with government policy is a right that everyone enjoys and has existed even in the midst of the founding of the United States of America, when the Constitution was put to a national referendum for ratification. There is a long line of individuals who want things done a certain way and will not stop for anything short of complete satisfaction.

Liberals and conservatives both hate feeling alienated by a government that they feel oppresses them. Everyone feels insecure about what is out of their control and will do whatever it takes to help change the perceived threat to their livelihoods.

However troubling everything seems to those Americans who feel the sky is falling, it cannot possibly get any worse than in other parts of the world. The fact that Americans have the right to complain about their government is completely non-existent in certain parts of the world to this day. Those governments will spend as they see fit, even while women and children literally starve to death.

So death and taxes may be certain, but they don’t have to be certainly debilitating. To get bogged down in thinking nothing can be done to extend our lives is not using the intelligence all Americans have. Honest ingenuity and fiscal responsibility are the best tools we have, so use them judiciously.