Archive for ethics
Another Conservative Christian Warmonger
Posted by: |Finally, the truth comes out. At long last, we now know why Joe Carter is not and can never be a Christian libertarian – because he is a conservative Christian warmonger.
According to his profile at the Acton Institute PowerBlog:
Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, online editor for First Things, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History’s Greatest Communicator (Crossway).
Although I am familiar with the Acton Institute, and appreciate its defense of the free market, I had never heard of Joe Carter until I was directed to a series of posts he wrote attacking the idea that one can be a Christian libertarian. If you are interested in reading them, see here, here, here, and here. If you are interested in reading some responses, see here, here, here, and here.
I never bothered to respond to Carter because (1) I am much too busy writing other things, (2) I have already made the case for Christian libertarianism in a lecture I gave at the Mises Institute on "Is Libertarianism Compatible with Religion?" and (3) because I have a number of friends who are in fact Christian libertarians: David Theroux of the Independent Institute, Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation, William Anderson of Frostburg State University, Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, Andrew Napolitano of Fox News, Shawn Rittenour and Jeff Herbener of Grove City College, Guido Hulsmann of the University of Angers, Lew Rockwell and Tom Woods of the Mises Institute, Norman Horn of LibertarianChristians.com, Timothy Terrell of Wofford College, Gerard Casey of University College Dublin, Jason Jewell of Faulkner University, Robert Murphy of Free Advice, Gary North of GaryNorth.com, and Jeff Tucker of Laissez Faire Books (my apologies to any of my friends I have inadvertently forgotten).
But it’s not just Christian libertarianism that Carter has a problem with.
One post of his that I do feel compelled to respond to is "How to Love Liberty More Than a Libertarian Economist." The economist in question is Brian Caplan, a Professor of Economics at George Mason University who blogs at EconLog. In his attack on libertarianism, Carter refers to a post by Caplan titled "My Beautiful Bubble." To this post of Caplan, the conservative Steve Sailer replied: "Of course, if there were a big war, it would be nice to be defended by all those dreary American you despise. And, the irony is, they’d do it, too, just because you are an American." Caplan replied to Sailer’s comment in another post titled "Reciprocity and Irony: A View from My Bubble." In his post, Carter reprinted the concluding part of Caplan’s reply in full:
- I pay good money for these protective services. So I don’t see why my American defenders deserve any more gratitude than the countless other people – American and foreign – I trade with.
- Since my American defenders are paid by heavy taxes whether I like it or not, they deserve far less gratitude than my genuine trading partners, who scrupulously respect the sanctity of my Bubble.
- In fact, I think my American "defenders" owe me an apology. My best guess is that, on net, the U.S. armed forces increase the probability that a big war will adversely affect me. While they deter some threats, they provoke many others. If I lived in a Bubble in Switzerland (happily neutral since 1815), at least I’d know that I was getting some value for my tax dollars.
I take no sides in any dispute between Carter and Caplan or Caplan and Sailer. I only mention all of the above to provide the necessary context for Carter’s closing paragraphs:
What Caplan misses in Sailor’s criticism is that the "dreary Americans" are not protecting him because of the pittance he pays in taxes. They are protecting him because they love liberty more than he does.
Caplan’s libertarianism leads him (rightly, I believe) to embrace pacifism. As he says, the foreign policy that follows from libertarian principles is not isolationism, but opposition to all warfare. The [sic] is internally consistent yet self-defeating since the conclusion is that libertarianism means loving liberty only to the point that you are not required to defend it by means of warfare.
In contrast, I – like many other veterans in America – served my country (fifteen years in the Marine Corps) precisely because I loved freedom. I loved it so much that I was willing to sacrifice some of my own freedom, or even my life if necessary, to secure it for myself, for my nation, and for libertarian pacifists like Caplan. He is able to afford the luxury of living in his beautiful bubble because other Americans have bought that liberty for him. For over two centuries, American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have paid the cost necessary to allow people like him to live freely. We have provided him with the safety and security he needs to crawl off in his elite bubble and forget that people like us exist.
Caplan is free to move to Switzerland, though I suspect he’ll keep his Bubble in Arlington, Virginia. As a libertarian economics professor at George Mason he’s smart enough to do the calculus. He knows that his optimal choice is to stay put and keep free-riding on the benefits provided by other people – whether liberal, conservative, or libertarian – who love liberty more than he does.
I want to focus on Carter’s remarks about the military in the first and third paragraphs because most of the statements he makes are typical of conservatives, and especially conservative Christian warmongers.
According to the Department of Defense, "All four active services met or exceeded their numerical accession goals for fiscal year 2011." Here are the actual numbers:
Army – 64,019 accessions, with a goal of 64,000
Navy – 33,444 accessions, with a goal of 33,400
Marine Corps – 29,773 accessions, with a goal of 29,750
Air Force – 28,518 accessions, with a goal of 28,515
This means that 155,754 Americans joined the military in fiscal year 2011 (Oct. 1, 2010–Sept. 30, 2011). Does anyone besides Joe Carter actually believe that even a majority of those who joined the military did so because they loved liberty more than Brian Caplan? Could it rather have something to do with being talked into it by lying military recruiters, the billions the military spends on advertising, the No Child Left Behind Act, the promise of free money for college, the desire to get away from home, the chance to kill foreigners for real instead of just in video games, revenge for 9/11, the adventure, the world travel, family tradition, or the generous retirement benefits? I suspect the main reason is the economy; i.e., the poverty draft.
Sorry, Joe, you – like many other veterans in America – didn’t serve your country. You served the state. You helped maintain a global empire of troops and bases. You helped carry out an evil interventionist foreign policy. You didn’t defend anyone’s freedoms. You didn’t preserve the American way of life. You didn’t uphold the Constitution. You didn’t protect the nation. You didn’t "uphold the freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for future generations" like the lying Marine Corps recruiting postcard says that was sent to high school students. Your death wouldn’t have secured anything. Your death would have been in vain.
And as for American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines paying the cost for over two centuries to allow libertarians to live freely – instead of defending our freedoms, they have jeopardized our freedoms. But don’t take my word for it; take it from VMI grad and Army reservist Jacob Hornberger: "The Troops Don’t Defend Our Freedoms" and "An Open Letter to the Troops: You’re Not Defending Our Freedoms."
Oh, U.S. troops have been busy for over two centuries, but they have been busy doing more intervening in foreign countries than defending Americans’ freedoms. Things like disaster relief, humanitarian aid, nation building, regime change, assassinations, forcibly opening markets, bombing, invading, occupying, maiming, torturing, killing, peacekeeping, enforcing UN resolutions, preemptive strikes, spreading democracy at the point of a gun, garrisoning the planet with troops and bases, training foreign armies, rebuilding infrastructure, reviving public services, unleashing civil unrest, policing the world, intervening in other countries, and fighting foreign wars.
Americans today face the triple threat of the warfare/national security/police state, largely due to conservatives in Congress (fully supported by conservative Christians outside of Congress) during the Bush years not overturning all the evils of the federal government that were already in place and adding much more evil of their own
One reason why conservative Christians like Joe Carter are so different from, and so puzzled by, Christian libertarians is because they are conservative Christian warmongers who worship the golden calf of the military.
Originally published on LewRockwell.com on May 2, 2012.
Tags: christian libertarian, ethics, Joe Carter, libertarian christian, libertarianism, theology, war, war on terror
Our Marxist Tax Code
Posted by: |Originally published at The New American on April 10, 2012.
Tax season is winding down once again, but the progressivity of the tax code is still with us. Most Americans who had more taxes withheld from their paychecks than they owe in taxes have already filed for their refunds. But not only did many Americans have no tax liability, some of them who didn’t owe any taxes to begin with still received a refund, all thanks to our Marxist tax code.
At the end of section two of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, in addition to calling for the abolition of private property and the centralization of the means of production in the hands of the state, he petitioned for “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.”
This is based on the Marxist dictum (that many Americans think appears in the Constitution): “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” and on Marx’s mistaken notion of the result of the inequality of wealth, as we see in his Das Kapital: “In proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse…. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole.”
Yet, from its very beginning, the U.S. tax code has sought to soak “the rich” with “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.”
The income tax began with a 1 percent tax on taxable income above $3,000 followed by a series of surcharges of up to 6 percent applied to higher incomes. The maximum rate of 7 percent was applied to taxable income over $500,000. In addition, there was an exemption of $3,000 for a single person and $4,000 for a married couple.
The tax rate in the highest tax bracket rapidly increased, up to 67 percent in 1917 and 77 percent in 1918, and then rose to 81 percent in 1940, 88 percent in 1942, and a whopping 94 percent in 1944. In 1942, the top rate began applying to all incomes over $200,000 instead of $5 million as it had previously. After dropping briefly, the top rate stayed near or above 90 percent between 1950 and 1963.
Under President Reagan, the top marginal tax rate fell from 70 down to 50 percent, and then down to 38.5 before stopping at 28 percent. The tax brackets were also eventually reduced to just two. This doesn’t mean that the government cut spending and balanced its budgets during the 1980s like it should have, or that it didn’t raise other taxes like it shouldn’t have, but the fact remains that the highest tax bracket fell to under 30 percent for the first time since 1931.
After both rates and brackets increased during the Bush Sr. and Clinton years, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA) gave us our current system of six brackets of 10, 15, 25, 28, 33, and 35 percent. The lowest bracket was scheduled to be eliminated, and four of the other rates were scheduled to rise, giving us five brackets of 15, 28, 31, 26, and 39.6 percent, were it not for the two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts enacted at the end of 2010.
But although the tax brackets have fallen in number and amount since their height in the 1960s, this does not mean that “the rich” have stopped paying their “fair share.”
According to the most recently released IRS data, in tax year 2009, the top 1 percent of taxpayers (in terms of adjusted gross income) paid 36.73 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 5 percent of taxpayers paid 58.66 percent. The top 10 percent of taxpayers paid 70.47. The top 25 percent of taxpayers paid 87.3 percent of the taxes, and the top 50 percent paid a whopping 97.75 percent.
There are a number of ways in which the tax code is designed to punish “the rich”; that is, punish success and reward those who do nothing but have children.
Consider the example of a typical American family with two children. Because of the progressive nature of the tax code, for tax year 2011, this family could make $45,399 and still pay nothing in federal income taxes. This is because the $11,600 standard deduction and $14,800 deduction for personal exemptions reduces this family’s taxable income to $18,999. This leaves a tax liability of $1,996, which is reduced to zero thanks to a $1,000 per child tax credit.
But it’s not just the progressive tax brackets that punish “the rich” and favor “the poor.” A tax credit is a dollar-for-dollar reduction of the amount of income tax owed. It may reduce the tax owed to zero, but if there is no taxable income to begin with, then no credit can be taken.
However, some tax credits are refundable; that is, you still get the credit even if you don’t have any tax liability. These refundable credits include the adoption credit (up to $13,360 per child), the first-time homebuyer credit (up to $4,000 or $8,000 if married filing jointly), the additional child tax credit (up to $1,000 per child), the American Opportunity credit (up to $1,000 per student, with 40 percent of the credit being refundable), and the earned income credit (up to $5,751 for three children).
Refundable tax credits can amount to a significant part of a family’s income. Consider once again a typical American family with two children. For tax year 2011, they can make up to $16,699 and not only owe nothing in taxes, but get a $5,112 earned income credit plus a $1,000 per child additional tax credit refunded to them. This effectively gives them an income of $24,111.
This artificial income of $24,111 is much better than a real income of $24,111, and for three reasons. First, the family’s income is still $16,699 when qualifying for public assistance. Second, no income tax is due on income from refundable tax credits. And three, the taxable wages for Social Security and Medicare are only $16,699.
Another way “the rich” are targeted is through the phase-out of tax deductions and credits. This means that the value of the credit is reduced as income rises. And in some cases, the credit is disallowed altogether.
The $1,000 child tax credit is reduced by 5 percent for each $1,000, or part of that amount, above the phase-out amount of $75,000 ($110,000 if married filing jointly).
The child and dependent care credit is 35 percent of expenses up to a maximum credit amount of $3,000 for one child and $6,000 for two or more children. But this is only if you make up to $15,000. The percentage is reduced by 1 percent (down to a minimum of 20 percent) for each $2,000, or part of that amount, of income above $15,000.
The retirement savings contributions credit (up to $1,000 or $2,000 if married filing jointly) cannot be claimed once adjusted gross income exceeds $28,250 ($56,500 if married filing jointly).
If you itemize deductions and your adjusted gross income is more than $109,000, you cannot deduct your mortgage insurance premiums.
IRA contributions for those covered by a retirement plan are reduced when modified adjusted gross income goes over $56,000 ($66,000 for married filing jointly) and not deductible at all once their modified adjusted gross income reaches $66,000 ($110,000 if married filing jointly).
Education credits and deductions take a hit as well.
Up to $2,500 of student loan interest is tax deductible. However, this deduction begins to be phased out once your modified adjusted gross income reaches $60,000 ($120,000 if married filing jointly) and is not allowed once your income reaches $75,000 ($150,000 if married filing jointly).
No American opportunity credit (maximum of $2,500 for each student) for qualified educational expenses can be claimed if your modified adjusted gross income reaches $90,000 ($180,000 if married filing jointly). And a phase-out of the credit begins at $80,000 ($160,000 if married filing jointly).
No lifetime learning credit (maximum of $2,000) for qualified educational expenses can be claimed if your modified adjusted gross income reaches $61,000 ($122,000 if married filing jointly). And a phase-out of the credit begins at $51,000 ($102,000 if married filing jointly).
The tuition and fees deduction of up to $4,000 per tax return for qualified educational expenses is lowered to a maximum of $2,000 once your modified adjusted gross income exceeds $65,000 ($130,000 if married filing jointly) and eliminated if your income exceeds $80,000 ($160,000 if married filing jointly).
The phase-outs also apply to the strictly refundable tax credits.
If you have three or more children and make over $43,997 ($49,077 if married filing jointly), two children and make over $40,963 ($46,043 if married filing jointly), or one child and make over $36,051 ($41,131 if married filing jointly), you are not eligible to claim the earned income credit. And the maximum amount of the credit drops steadily once your income exceeds $21,800.
To take the adoption credit, your modified adjusted gross income cannot exceed $225,210. And the amount of your credit is reduced once your income reaches $185,210.
To take the first-time homebuyer credit, your modified adjusted gross income cannot equal $145,000 or more ($245,000 if married filing jointly).
The income phase-out for the additional child tax credit begins, like the child tax credit, at $75,000 ($110,000 if married filing jointly).
No wonder the top 10 percent of income earners in America pay over 70 percent of the taxes! The brackets punish them, the phase-outs penalize them, and the refundable tax credits add insult to the injury of “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” There is nothing American about the U.S. tax code. It is straight out of the Communist Manifesto.
According to a recent report by the Heritage Foundation: “The percentage of people who do not pay federal income taxes, and who are not claimed as dependents by someone who does pay them, jumped from 14.8 percent in 1984 to 49.5 percent in 2009.” This means that about half of all Americans don’t pay any income taxes.
But the emphasis placed by some conservatives on the lack of taxes paid by some Americans is getting the whole issue backward. The solution is not a national sales tax or flat tax that forces all Americans to pay some arbitrary “fair share” and actually perpetuates the progressivity of the tax code. And neither is it to eliminate all the deductions and credits in order to punish those with low incomes by increasing their taxes.
The solution is to decrease the tax burden of those who are paying the taxes now by eliminating the income tax altogether. This is the Ron Paul approach. In a recent NPR interview, congressman and Republican presidential candidate Paul put the emphasis where it belongs — keeping as much tax revenue out of the hands of the federal government as possible. In reply to the question, “Do you believe that income derived from dividends interest or capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate than income earned from a salary or commissions?,” Dr. Paul said:
Well, I’d like to have everybody taxed at the same rate, and of course, my goal is to get as close to zero as possible, because there was a time in our history when we didn’t have income taxes. But when government takes it upon themselves to do so much, you have to have a tax code. But if you’re going to be the policemen of the world and run all these wars, you have to have a tax code. But as far as what the rates should be, I think it should be as low as possible for — for everybody.
The only reason it appears that we can’t do without an income tax is that Congress has an insatiable desire to spend money. But if the functions of the federal government were strictly limited to only those authorized by the Constitution, the government could be funded by user fees, land sales, excise taxes, and revenue tariffs (like it was from 1789 to 1913), or these things in combination with a lottery or donations. Don’t laugh, in fiscal year 2011, $3,277,369.23 was given by Americans to the federal government for the purpose of debt reduction. A small amount, yes, but only alongside the gargantuan trillion-dollar budgets of the last twenty years.
Tags: economics, ethics, taxation, taxes
On the Consistency of Christian Libertarianism
Posted by: |Two weeks ago I wrote an initial post critiquing Joe Carter of the Acton Institute for his ill-conceived criticism of libertarianism, and specifically the idea of libertarianism from a Christian point of view. In this post, I will continue to make the case that Carter simply does not understand libertarianism properly and is woefully misinformed about Christian libertarianism in particular.
Carter curiously wrote in What is a Christian Libertarian? that he does not really understand what it means to be a Christian libertarian. He then proceeds to give five conjectures about how he thinks people use the term. I will not address his types labeled #2 through #5 because they are basically ridiculous and have no semblance at all to what Christian libertarianism is truly about. Those types could be equally applied to any other political philosophy – yes, even his dearly held conservatism – so I do not see it as having much substance worth addressing. (Also, I want to note Jacqueline Otto’s apt response Four Things Christian Libertarians Believe, which I recommend.)
Moreover, he clearly had never heard of LibertarianChristians.com beforehand, nor had he noticed how many hard core libertarians like Lew Rockwell or Tom Woods or Robert Murphy or Ron Paul are also hard core Christians. This leads us to Type #1, which is where he begins to sound sensible, if still relatively unaware of the facts.
Type #1 Those who have developed a consistent philosophy in which libertarianism and Christianity are fully compatible. – Although I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Type 1—and I’m not sure it’s even possible—I believe this is the ideal use of the term.
Just because you haven’t met one doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but I am glad he admits that this ought to be the standard for the term.
Of course no one is going to be have a perfectly consistent religio-political worldview. But this should be our goal. And if we find that it’s nearly impossible to resolve the tensions between the two (as with Christian Marxism), then the intellectually respectable choice would be two abandon one or the other.
The trouble with being a Type 1 Christian libertarian is that it appears to limit the types of Christian views you can hold. For instance, I’m not sure it’s possible to be a politically consistent Catholic and politically consistent libertarian since the social doctrines of the Catholic Church are often antithetical to libertarian doctrines. (But I could be wrong.)
Not only could you be wrong to say such, you would be wrong. Again, see how Lew Rockwell and Tom Woods have dealt with this in their writings on Catholic social doctrine, especially Tom Woods’s book The Church and the Market.
The most obvious possibility for integration is a form of Two Kingdoms theology. If I were a libertarian trying to integrate my political views with my faith, that is where I would start.
Kudos to Carter, the background theology of much of what I write about has a lot of similarity to the Two Kingdoms theology.
But that leads me to a primary complaint I have with most libertarians: They often work backwards from a desire or grievance to the development of their core principles. Christians, on the other hand, must start with principles derived from the Bible and/or Christian tradition and work their way forward toward a coherent political philosophy. Again, I may be wrong, but I don’t see how starting from Biblical principles you’d end up with any political philosophy that resembled American-style libertarianism.
From my Protestant point of view, his statement about libertarianism “limiting” the “Christian” views I can hold I find completely silly. Of course it “limits” things, as any more specialized knowledge of the universe will do. If I hold a PhD in a scientific field, it definitely puts a “limit” on the types of pure conjectures about science and the universe that I might glean from Scripture. But so what? The Bible is not a scientific textbook, or an economics textbook. All truth is God’s truth, and I fundamentally believe that whatever truth I come to discover in nature will not contradict my Christian beliefs.
Likewise, an understanding from natural ethics that the State is an inherently immoral institution that requires aggression to operate would obviously preclude me from saying that the Bible mandates statism – that is a limitation. But so what? I can come to the same conclusion directly from Scripture as well.
I can see from the Bible that man has a sinful nature, and even if you put the best people in positions of power they will abuse it and rain havoc upon both the good and the evil. The narrative from Scripture clearly shows that the State is not the Kingdom of God and that the State in fact continually stands against it. The narrative from Scripture clearly mandates an ethical code that is voluntary in nature, not aggressive, and no one is given special privileges of position that exempt them from that ethical code. What is Statism but a philosophy that compels one group of people to follow a special, privileged set of people who claim exemption from certain ethical norms?
Perhaps this is not exactly his point, though. I suppose it is also possible that Carter thinks that by affirming “Christian libertarianism” one must also affirm certain immoral actions that have heretofore been made illegal by the State. Nonetheless, these notions are fallacious as well. I do not have to approve of activity X in any moral sense in order to advocate that activity X should not be punitively punished by the State. Libertarians oppose aggression, even when it is used to thwart non-aggressive behaviors that I find morally reprehensible. I can persuade against, preach against, or write against prostitution, but I will not burn down a whore house or throw them all in prison just because I consider it to be immoral.
I’ll admit that I’m intrigued by the idea of Christian libertarianism. But so far I haven’t seen any strong arguments for the philosophy. For instance, in order to be truly Christian, the Christian libertarian would have to resolve the tension between libertarianism’s focus on the individual rights and Christianity’s emphasis on communal obligations.
Some Christian libertarians attempt to do this, of course, but it is often at the expense of their libertarianism. For all its faults, libertarianism is an internally coherent self-contained political ideology. That is one of its chief selling points. Yet when you try to incorporate an alien worldview (such as Christianity) into the system it waters down the philosophy and short circuits its internal consistency. The result is that you have a form of libertarianism that is ad hoc and confused.
Again, just because you have not seen any strong arguments does not mean they are non-existent. Please, spend any amount of time on LibertarianChristians.com and you will see plenty of these arguments.
I wonder if he is confusing libertarianism with Ayn Rand and objectivism, which do in many respects advocate a very different kind of lifestyle than a Christian. If so, then once again I would say that Carter is just downright misinformed about libertarianism in general.
Libertarianism does not claim to give a comprehensive philosophy of life, the universe, and everything. It is a political philosophy focusing on the ethics of aggression and government and the value of voluntary interactions, nothing more. Where is libertarianism’s conflict with Christianity when they essentially say the same things? Unless Carter is assuming that libertarians take on a Randian view of selfishness, then this resolves the tension of individual rights and communal obligations. I am not forced to comply with the discipline of the Church, for instance, but I choose to do so. My obligations come from my voluntary assent. It is as simple as that.
However, if by “communal obligations” Carter means something akin to government-provided safety nets and whatnot, then I defy him to justify why the State should be able to force such “obligations” upon people either by Scripture or natural law.
I am not confused in my libertarian philosophy or my Christianity. I have no king but King Jesus, no allegiance but to the Kingdom of God, no desire for violence upon my fellow man, and no better term that can summarize all of it together as succinctly as Christian libertarianism.
Tags: Bible, christian libertarian, christian libertarianism, Christianity, ethics, theology
Time for a Drink
Posted by: |While eating in a restaurant in the Atlanta airport recently, I noticed that the restaurant’s bar was closed and — to make it perfectly clear — all the chairs had been turned over and placed on the bar.
Now, although I don’t frequent bars in airports or anywhere else, I was nevertheless intrigued. “The bar doesn’t open until 12:30 on Sundays,” said my waiter. But, as I found out later, it isn’t just this particular airport bar that didn’t open until Sunday afternoon. In Georgia, no alcohol may be served in restaurants or bars until after 12:30 on Sundays.
In fact, until just recently, alcohol sales in retail stores on Sundays were prohibited by the Georgia legislature. On April 28, 2011, Nathan Deal, Georgia’s governor, signed legislation allowing local communities the option of voting on whether to continue the Sunday alcohol-sales ban in their cities and counties or to eliminate it. Georgia’s previous governor, Sonny Perdue, had always pledged to veto any measure ending the ban on Sunday sales, but he left office on January 10, 2011, constitutionally ineligible to seek a third consecutive term.
On November 8, 2011 (the first election date available under state law), about 120 of Georgia’s almost 700 cities and counties held a referendum on the matter of Sunday alcohol sales. In more than 100 communities that voted, the Sunday restriction was lifted, in many cases by large margins. The effective date of the repeal varied from November to February. Sunday sales in Georgia’s capital and largest city, Atlanta, began on January 1, 2012.
The cost of having a single-issue ballot kept many communities from having such a referendum. However, on March 6, voters in some Georgia communities had more than a Republican presidential nominee to vote on in the Super Tuesday elections. In 16 cities and counties, there also appeared on the ballot the Sunday alcohol-sales question. The measure passed everywhere it was voted on except in the city of Jeffersonville, where it failed by one vote.
But Georgia is not alone when it comes to states that restrict alcohol sales on Sundays. Unlike Nevada and Louisiana, where beer, wine, and liquor sales are legal 24 hours a day, seven days a week, most states (or cities and counties that have been given a local option) restrict alcohol sales in some way on Sundays. A distinction is usually made between alcohol consumed on-premises and alcohol purchased for consumption off-premises. In Indiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Connecticut, the sale of alcohol is prohibited for consumption off-premises on Sunday. Most counties in Arkansas and Mississippi are the same way. In Colorado, the Sunday sales restriction wasn’t lifted until 2008. Hard liquor cannot be sold for off-premise consumption on Sunday in Texas, Utah, North Carolina, or South Carolina. In Nebraska, there can be no on- or off-premises sales of hard liquor before noon on Sundays. No alcoholic beverages of any kind can be sold on- or off-premises before 1:00 p.m. on Sunday in West Virginia. Other states (and cities or counties) with Sunday restrictions generally have a later time on Sunday morning for alcohol sales (on- or off-premises) than during the other days of the week.
Why?
It can’t possibly be because the states, counties, and municipalities are exercising what is commonly referred to as their police powers to protect the public’s health, safety, and morals.
If there is something dangerous about drinking alcohol on Sunday morning before noon, then it is equally dangerous to drink alcohol before noon on any other day of the week. Yet most states with Sunday alcohol-sales restrictions generally allow the on-premises sale of alcohol the rest of the week sometime between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. But what is so magical about 6:00 a.m.? Is there really any difference between letting someone be served a drink at 5:30 a.m. instead of 6:00 a.m.? Some states prohibit the sale of alcohol only between 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. Do they not care about the health, safety, and morals of their citizens the other 20 hours of the day?
States are doing a poor job if they are protecting their citizens from the dangers of alcohol only during certain hours and on certain days. Shouldn’t all states at least follow the model of Kansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee? Those states are “dry” by default; individual counties must vote to become “wet.” Thirty other states allow their counties to go dry only by public referendum, but at least they give their counties that option. Seventeen states preclude any of their counties from going dry.
Consistency was never the hallmark of government at any level. In Wisconsin, one can be served alcohol until 2:00 a.m. on Sunday through Thursday, but until 2:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, with no ending time at all on New Year’s Day. That seems counterintuitive, since the government is extending alcohol sales during the times when people are more likely to abuse alcohol. And why is it that casinos all along the Mississippi River are permitted to be open 24/7 and give free alcohol to gambling patrons all hours of the day and night? Many convenience stores also sell pornography in addition to beer and wine. There are no time restrictions on the purchase of pornography. And there are no laws that forbid the purchase of pornography on Sundays.
There is really only one reason that state and local governments and voters in counties and cities support restricting alcohol sales on Sundays: they are puritanical busybodies clinging to Prohibition- or Colonial America-era blue laws.
It was generally religious preferences that led Georgians to vote against the November referendum on the matter of Sunday alcohol sales. In the city of Snellville, James Freedle voted against the referendum, saying, “I don’t think it’s appropriate to drink on Sunday.” In the city of Forest Park, Mayor and Sunday School teacher Corine Deyton, who also said she voted no, commented, “If you can’t do without alcohol one day a week, there’s something bad wrong with you.” In rural Elbert County, one of the few areas where the referendum failed to pass, church pianist Patsy Scarborough pointedly said, “This nation has a trend of turning away from good morals. Americans need to be in church on Sunday, not out buying alcohol.” “Thanks for voting no to sell alcohol on Sunday,” read a sign on an Elbert County local church after the referendum failed.
But it’s not just alcohol sales on Sunday. In some states and counties it is still illegal on Sunday to hunt, hold horse races, sell cars, or open a store before noon.
Now, as a religious person myself who does attend church on Sunday and doesn’t purchase alcohol on Sunday or any other day of the week, I am sympathetic to those Georgians’ views of church attendance and alcohol. That does not mean, however, that I believe that people who, for whatever reason, don’t attend church on Sunday should be punished by not allowing them to buy a six-pack of beer at 7-Eleven on Sunday morning before they go fishing.
Some religious people always focus on the negative. They don’t drink, dance, smoke, chew, or go with girls who do — but then they want to spread the misery even if it means using the state to tell others how they should live. It reminds me of H.L. Mencken’s famous definition of puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
The problem with alcohol prohibitionists — religious or otherwise — is that they, for whatever reason, have never accepted or been introduced to the philosophy of freedom. Restricting the sale of alcohol or any other product on Sunday is really a restriction on commerce, property, and freedom, things that Americans — religious or otherwise — say they hold dear.
In a free society, businesses make their own decisions as to the days and times when they will offer their products for sale, just as individual persons make their own decisions as to the day and time when, and place of business where, they will make purchases. In fact, a free society can’t have it any other way.
No alcohol was consumed on Sunday during the writing of this article.
Originally published at The Future of Freedom Foundation on March 20, 2012.
Tags: ethics, free society, freedom, prohibition, religion
Some Caliphate
Posted by: |At its height under Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire (1299–1923) – the closest thing to a global, Islamic caliphate – controlled vast swaths of land in the Middle East, North Africa, western Asia, Europe, and the Balkans. It was one of the most powerful, most long-lived, most multiethnic, most multinational, and most multilingual empires in history. However, it failed miserably at imposing Sharia law and the Muslim faith on all its subjects, and, in fact, didn’t even make an attempt to do so.
As a Bible-believing Christian, I have major issues and insurmountable theological differences with the Islamic religion. However, this does not mean that I advocate launching preemptive strikes against Muslim countries in the name of national defense, interfering in Muslim countries, invading Muslim countries under false pretexts, or lying about Muslim countries – like certain Jews in the Israeli government and certain Christian ministries in the United States.
Tags: ethics, iran, iraq, middle east, politics, war, war on terror
Norman Horn is the creator and primary writer for LCC. Learn a little bit about him in the 