Pro-life strike (abortion boycott) mission: To purify our prayers and other pro-life efforts, and to make a concrete difference, we refuse to fund the abortion industry. We boycott corporate abortion funding, and hold back abortion taxes. We pray for life; we will not pay for death!
The fourth and most troubling level of injustice cited in the previous post comes down to this: when pro-life American Christians willingly sign their 1040 form, they become willing accomplices to tax-funded murder, and cannot blame anyone else.
As noted on the "Manifesto" page, and in at least two blog posts below [1][2], the Scriptural mandate to "render to Caesar..." (Mt.22:21) cannot credibly be used as an excuse to docilely cooperate in the tax-funded holocaust.
We sing patriotic songs about our liberty, and we honor the rule of law enshrined in our Constitution. We proudly wave the flag and we pity the poor oppressed in other parts of the world. We are Americans; we are free.
The very act of signing the 1040 is indeed an act of freedom, a voluntary decision. No one forcing the signature, no gun to the head. And therein lies the problem.
Do we truly believe all the talk about freedom? Our Constitution says that we the people are Caesar, and the bureaucrats must answer to us. Then why continue to act as if the opposite were the case, and defer to the usurpers? Is this not abdication?
Now, I realize that active tax resistance is highly problematic and may be inadvisable for many folks, especially for those with young dependent children. But surely there must be at least a small percentage of pro-life people who can do this. A small percentage of millions is a few thousand. That would make a huge impact.
Here is a first draft attempt to flesh out Pope Benedict's suggestion of fiscal subsidiarity. If Obama and congressional Democrats truly want to find common ground on the issue of tax-funded abortion, try this: citizen allocation of certain government expenditures.
From the standpoint of well-formed moral principles, appropriations for Title X abortion services, funding for Planned Parenthood and U.N. population control programs and the like might be easier to accept if they were funded solely by individuals who freely chose to do so. Here's how such a plan might work:
All controversial value-laden budget items would be removed from congressional consideration. Congress would only have the authority to include such items in a citizen allocation check list. The 1040 tax form would now include a new table with each of these allocation items listed. The taxpayer could optionally allocate a portion of his taxes toward one or more of these programs without increasing his total tax liability. Each program on the list would receive tax money only in the amount allocated by individual taxpayers.
So, for example, Planned Parenthood would only receive tax money from citizens who proactively chose to allocate to them. The pro-life and neutral citizens who chose not to support PP or other abortion programs would therefore be able to pay taxes in good conscience, knowing that their money was not paying for the slaughter.
I suppose that pro-life programs could go on this list as well, with the expectation that only pro-life taxpayers would be allocating to them. The idea is: let each citizen follow the dictates of his own conscience with regard to all such value-laden allocations.
Note that this only works if there is no other government money going to these controversial programs. If Congress were still allowed to allocate monies from the general fund, such citizen allocation would merely be feel-good symbolic gestures, and the proposal would be useless.
As noted on the "Manifesto" page, and in at least two blog posts below [1] [2], the Scriptural mandate to "render to Caesar..." (Mt.22:21) cannot credibly be used as an excuse to docilely cooperate in the tax-funded holocaust.
