Citizens and Taxpayers

Pastors encounter all sorts of folks in their journey through ministry, but one particular character is both regularly recurring and always unwelcome.  I've not had opportunity to encounter such a soul directly in my small church ministry, thank the Maker, but they are out there.  I hear the stories.

This is the person who gives a great deal to the church, and makes absolutely sure the pastor...and everyone else...knows it.  This is the person whose largesse is a manifestation of their power in the community, and who is more than happy to use their disproportionately large chunk of the church budget to make sure the church does exactly what they want.

If things aren't as they wish, well, suddenly the threat of removing their portion of the budget is made quite explicit.   A sermon that crosses the line into challenging?  An uppity youth pastor who isn't teaching the "right" approach to faith?   A choir director who explores "unfamiliar" music?   Pastor will get that angry call from Old Man Johnson, demanding a meeting RIGHT NOW.  Threats will be made.  Hissy fits will be pitched.  If you're Presbyterian, that may involve spreadsheets and financial projections.

When wealth is used to control or manipulate the direction of a congregation, it is never a good thing.   It's a sign that for that individual, what matters in the church is not the well-being of the whole, but their own power.  It's a sign of spiritual bankruptcy.

There's not a competent pastor in this country who yearns for the presence of such a toxic soul in their church.

And yet, for some reason, we think that's a perfectly fine way to approach our life together as a nation.

When we understand ourselves primarily as "taxpayers," that's exactly what's going on.  We're describing our relationship to our nation not in terms of our embrace of the guiding principles of our democratic republic, but in terms of a transaction.   We're articulating our commitment to our Constitution not as the voluntary act of a free human being committed to the well-being of a nation that defends that freedom, but as a market exchange.

Given how toxic that mindset is in churches, why would it be any less poisonous in our life together as a nation?

Crackpot Idea Number 1040: Taxpayer Allocation Budgeting

My mind is an endlessly churning font of crackpot schemes, and this morning's neural randomness involved taxes.  As I was standing at the bus stop chatting with one of the moms, we were both lamenting the impressively sorry physical condition of our schools.   I live in Fairfax County, one of the richest counties in the United States.  Our school system is arguably one of the best in the nation.

But at nearly every school in Fairfax, kids are relegated to aging "mobile classrooms," which spring up like trailer parks around the periphery of most of our schools.  My little guy has been in a trailer two years running, one whose decor is essentially that of a 1970s basement.  He's cool with it, unless it's pouring rain, in which case the kids get wet when they go to gym, or to lunch any time they need to use the bathrooms.  For that, you need the main building.  There just aren't the funds to build permanent facilities that meet the needs of the kids.  The mom lamented that she'd be happy to have her taxes go to something like that.

Here's what I found myself wondering.  Congress is notoriously, wretchedly, heinously bad at budgeting.  They couldn't balance a budget if you held a gun to their heads.  They fail, year after year.  What if...what if...citizens did the budgeting?  By that, I don't mean we sit down and go through item by item.  Instead, near the end of working through your 1040 in TurboTax 2016, you'd have a section in which every major Federal department listed.  Education.  Energy.  Environment.  Defense.   Homeland Security.  Transportation.  Then, you'd allocate your taxes across those departments based on your priorities.   Want better schools?  Ramp up that percentage.  Want to spend billions on the Joint Strike Fighter?  No?  Ratchet that bad boy down.

The budget would, well, it would directly reflect the preferences of the people.    If it gets funded, well, then it gets funded.  If not, well, so it goes.  That could work at a state level, too, I suppose.   It would link paying taxes to a new empowerment as citizens.  If something doesn't manifestly contribute to the good, well, we're unlikely to pay for it.  At a bare minimum, it would be interesting to see what that budget would look like.

Ah well.  Yet another one of those ideas that will have to bear fruit in an alternate universe, I suppose.

Mirandized

Our societal takeaway from the recent failed Times Square bombing attempt is a teensy bit troubling. Following an unbelievably amateurish effort to detonate explosives, Faisal Shahzad was arrested on an aircraft. He apparently was quite the chatterbox, 'fessin' up almost enthusiastically. As Shahzad is a citizen of the United States, he was informed of his Miranda rights...meaning his rights under the Constitution. He kept on talkin', as getting attention was probably his hope all along. Probably something to do with getting back at his father, I'd surmise.

No citizen can be forced to incriminate themselves, and every citizen has the right to legal counsel. This little list of rights has been hammered into our heads. As pretty much every American TV show that's not reality TV is a cop/legal/courtroom drama, the Miranda statement is something we're all familiar with.

It's a given.

Or was, if things roll the way they seem to be rolling. Right wingers are, as they always are, outraged that Shahzad was read his Miranda rights. He's a terrorist! He doesn't deserve his Miranda rights! He stopped being a citizen the moment he decided to Wage War On America! There's much huffing and posturing and indignation, resulting in the possibility that terror suspects who "pose an imminent threat" may no longer be Mirandized. This, we are told, is an extension of the public safety exception, which allows suspects to be detained and questioned without being informed of their rights. This stirs all sorts of thoughts, but two in particular:

First, I'm not sure what actually constitutes a "public safety exception." Strong evidence pointed to Shahzad's culpability, sure. But he wasn't in the process of setting off a bomb. He wasn't at the scene of a crime immediately after its commission. He was on an airplane, sitting on his behind. So here is a citizen, who is the primary suspect in an investigation. He is arrested. He is read his rights, which he may then choose to act on...or not. Reading his rights to him did not, in any way that I can see, negatively impact public safety.

Second, and more significant, there are the implications of applying a "public safety exception" to American citizens who are terror suspects. Yeah, nobody likes a terrorist. But if a citizen is suspected of being involved in or plotting a terror attack, revoking their rights as a citizen in the name of "public safety" seems a very dangerous precedent. The danger, quite frankly, not the removal of that little script. Rather, it is the threat that seems to pose to the rights that underlie Miranda. Let's fast forward eight years to the Palin/Cuccinelli Administration. If you or I were implicated as possible terrorists, should we be stripped of our rights as citizens? You know, rights like not being indefinitely detained? Or not being [cough] encouraged to incriminate ourselves during the process of that indefinite detention? Or having the right to counsel and a speedy trial?

My sense of this is that some on the law-and-order right would be perfectly happy to have this be the case. It's all in the interests of public safety, you know.