If I were King I'd reduce taxes to the barest minimum

From an email from a disgruntled former reader (I won't post the whole thing - it's too long):

I first started reading your blog about 6 months ago. I found you on a Google search when you were criticizing the GOP. I agreed with everything that you said and I thought I had found another moderate Republican. Then you wrote something about "abortion is murder" and I left a comment which you ignored. That's why I'm sending an email instead.

I enjoy your writing but you are full of contradictions. Your writing is usually sincere but sometimes I think you are pandering to the Christians who read your blog. You don't criticize gays but you condemn abortion and call liberals "commies." You seem to be a kind and caring person but then you oppose healthcare reform and welfare for the less fortunate etc, etc, etc.

I replied because it was a polite email. Here's what I wrote:

Firstly I don't ignore comments. I read all comments with pleasure (mostly) and I remember what you wrote.

You said something disparaging about religious Southerners and I chose not to answer it because it would have been tedious to explain the obvious but I will do so now since you have taken the time to write such a long email.

I do criticize some - not all - gays. I don't like their leftist/collectivist group identity politics. I also don't like the "urban gay lifestyle" of promiscuity and abuse of drugs and booze. But sodomy is not on a par with abortion. Sodomy may be a sin but it is not an unforgivable son like murder. And abortion is murder. Maybe moralists are right that sodomy is bad for society but it still does not endanger anyone's basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness but abortion is a complete denial of the most fundamental right: the right to life. It destroys human life. That's called murder.

I'm not saying that I want to throw a woman in jail because she had a D & C due to danger to her own health. But calling a spade a spade is essential if you want to dissuade women from having abortions, as I do. Abortion has to be stigmatized if you want to change hearts and minds about it. And I would prefer to change hearts and minds culturally through education rather than politically by bullying.

Now, I'm not a Christian and Christian conservatives irritate me at times - especially the sanctimonious types but they are no worse than the insufferably smug and self-righteous Marxists of the Church of the Watermelons. I'm not politically naïve. I agree with conservative Christians on 80% of the issues but disagree with the commies 99.9% of the time. So, tell me: who are my natural political allies?

And yes, I like using the word "commie" for people who believe in any form of "collectivism" (which is basically a euphemism for communism) and who stupidly chose to ignore the wisdom of our Founding Fathers - oops - I mean founding dead white "male parental guardians" - who envisaged a form of government based on the individual sovereignty, liberty and self-determination with which God has endowed us.

BTW I don't oppose health-care reform or welfare for the less fortunate. I would like to see people who cannot afford insurance or who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own get help. I would prefer that that help come from private charities but I'm easy-going enough to not mind paying some taxes for government to provide a safety net in emergencies.

The operative phrases here are "through no fault of their own" and "in emergencies" and the help should only be temporary. The fact is that this sort of help is best provided by private charities who can assess individual needs personally on a case by case basis whereas government assesses cases by some sort of impersonal collectivist classification and more than often makes a mess of it.

As for the rest of your email: you're asking for my political philosophy. That's a book not an email reply. But I'll answer it simply by saying, "If I were King...."

If I were King, I would do only one thing. I'd put the Federal government on a strict diet - in fact a starvation diet - by using every legal means possible to reduce taxes and limit Congress, as our Founding Fathers intended, to raising revenue for national defense and foreign policy and for the regulation of interstate commerce. Everything else can quite easily be handled by the State, county and municipal governments and, if you don't like what's happening in your hood, move to another. Stick with that and we've solved 99.9% of all the ills that our society currently has.