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Unacceptable Offering

Thoreau, who I enjoy reading despite not agreeing with many of his political thoughts, offers a silly suggestion:

Wars should only be declared if approved in a referendum…and before you freak out over the pathologies of democracy, the votes are recorded and only those who vote for it have to pay for it.
The way I see it, if you feel that you can only sleep soundly at night if troops are occupying some foreign land that’s no thread to us, you ought to pay extra for that.

Of course he is not serious. Right?

Well, actually, it is exactly the kind of thing that the Left and the libertarian-Democrats really do support. If you can only sleep soundly at night if you don't feel directly responsible for gunfire somewhere in the world, then you will spend a lot of time thinking of ways to rationalize your lack of responsibility for that gunfire. Iraqis killing Iraqis is just fine - but bring our troops home!

I left the following comment (the second paragraph addresses something brought up by another commenter):

Yay! I vote for no more wars, but I still get to have my life and property defended by the military others vote for... thus I subjugate my fellow citizens into paying for something from which we all benefit. Very libertarian.

Better yet is the plan to have corporate taxes pay for war, because we all know that if we raise corporate taxes, that money comes out of the profits - but only in a way that affects the CEOs and major shareholders - not employee-owned stock. Thankfully, no corporation would pass along tax hikes to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Take that, evil Republithugs!

Thoreau is a smart and interesting guy, but some of his political posts sound so off-the-cuff that they don't make sense. This definitely is one of those.