I’m sure the libertarians among us will pardon me if I don’t feel as angry as them to pay five cents for a plastic bag. I tried to discern some sense of logic in Ian Hosking’s column, “Protesting D.C. government, one bag at a time,” but I could find none. It is beyond absurd to assert that this has anything to do with “special interests corrupting city affairs.” And don’t even get me started on the assertions of Nicholas O’Connell, who, in a previous letter to the editor on Feb. 15, assailed this minor tax as “a fundamental violation of our liberty.” Excuse me while I bang my head against a very large rock.
If you don’t like the bag tax, bring a bag with you! Use your jacket pockets! Do something! But don’t pretend this is an attack on our civil liberties. I’ll agree there are taxes in the world worth protesting, but surely not this.
I return to O’Connell’s letter, where he made this absurd claim: “It would be hard for the most ruthless Corporatist to design a more flagrantly regressive tax.” I cannot help but laugh every time I read this sentence. Apparently modern political thought entails umbrage at even the most benign of causes. It would be hard for the most radical libertarian to design a more flagrantly obsessive letter.
At long last, have you no sense of sanity?
Josh Feldman
SOC, 2013
