North Dakota Property Tax Debate Good Civics Lesson for Democracy

The recent vote and discussion in North Dakota about abolishing property taxes is an encouraging sign that grassroots democracy isn’t dead yet in America.  It’s too easy to redefine “citizenship” to include only passive consideration of top-down options from the government or media.

      Isn’t the government a monopoly unto itself, with no “anti-trust” counterforce in sight?  Aren’t newspaper and television companies the same, while also being regulated and made subservient to the feds?

    Getting citizens to openly discuss and think about civics issues is worth its weight in gold.  Too bad if those in power want to limit debate and have it all their own way.  I’ll concede more of this to generals and admirals in combat, but not to politicians.

      Come to think of it, didn’t those who went to the polls in the old Soviet Union have candidates and choices, though of the same ilk?  Photo above shows an engaged North Dakota resident that reminds us of what American democracy has always been about.

     The NY Times article “North Dakota Considers Eliminating Property Tax” generated 403 thoughtful comments as of yesterday.   They are a civics lesson about things that matter in our lives, with defenders of property taxes making commonsense observations.  In turn, detractors pointed out some of the bigger picture aspects of life and democracy that are often forgotten.

     Norman Rockwell captured this grassroots spirit for a 1943 Saturday Evening Post cover (left).  Have we gotten to  a point where nasty, angry, and disruptive “outside agitators” have taken over?

    In a follow up American Thinker essay “North Dakota Votes on Abolishing Property Taxes,”  Selwyn Duke offers some good-natured food-for-thought that seems to be increasingly disappearing in public  discussion of civic and political subjects:

     I’ve always objected to property taxes because they do violence to the concept of property ownership.  After all, what am I describing when saying the following: I have to pay a fee on a regular basis to stay in a home or apartment, and if I don’t I will be evicted from it?

    That is the status of a renter — not a landowner.

    Any which way you slice it, property tax is rent you pay to the government.  Sure, we don’t call it that.  But if the effect is the same, what’s the difference?  And government, with its “surcharges” and “assessments,” is infamous for conjuring up euphemisms for its excessive and unjust taxes.

     To be sure, if debate and opposition have been silenced, then what’s left can be considered “centrist” and “moderate.”  Ask those who lived in Germany or Russia during the 1930s.  No doubt that opposition Jewish viewpoints in ancient Sodom and Gemorrah were considered the work of a hateful fringe element.