Taxation without Representation

Today Iowa GOP Chairman A.J. Spiker released the following statement in response to the passage of HR-8489, which prohibits state money from being used to finance abortions.  "Many Iowans, including myself, are morally opposed to abortion. It is simply wrong to force an individual to finance something that is against his or her conscience," said Chairman Spiker. "As Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘to compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.' "I applaud the Iowa House for standing up not only for life but for all Iowans who are morally opposed to their tax dollars being used for abortions."    

I look forward to Mr. Spiker's support for my proposed law prohibiting my tax dollars from going to everything to which I am morally opposed. Let's start with crazy-ass Steve King's salary and go from there.  And the Jefferson quote is ripped competely out of context, torn into tiny bits, and apparently tossed up into the air in front of an electric fan. It comes from the Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom — and the exact quote refers to "opinions" and not "ideas" — and it's about not using public money to promote religion. To wit:

That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry. 

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and assume that Mr. Spiker is not altogether a supporter of that last bit.

If he is, then I'm going to assume he's outraged by the new law passed in Arizona — State Motto: If It's Crazy, We Got There First! — whereby they'll be teaching the Bible on the public's dime in the public schools:

It also creates an exemption for the Bible from a law that says "all books, publications, papers and audiovisual materials of a sectarian, partisan or denominational character" are prohibited from public schools and their libraries.

Darn, and I was dying to see what happened when they got to the unit on the Koran. Mr. Jefferson just threw a glass of Madeira at the wall in the Beyond.

  Charles Pierce