Tax payers support murder

Editor,

I am responding to the April 17 Daily Lobo editorial page cartoon on taxes that mentioned me.

I have paid no federal income tax for 22 years. I refuse to pay for the United State to rob, terrorize, cripple and murder millions of our sisters and brothers worldwide.

If your tax dollars burned homes and killed families on your street, would you pay? Are neighbors abroad less human, less precious than neighbors on our street? How much good is it to pray, hope and protest for peace if we pay for war? Many hack at the branches of evil, only a few strike at the root.

Secretary of State Alexander Haig, under President Reagan, said the following of anti-war protesters: “Let them demonstrate all they want as long as they pay their taxes.”

If I aim to treat others as I want to be treated, what right do I have to pay for their homes to be bombed — their legs and arms blown off?

How could I risk and endure torture and prison to stand for justice in a U.S.-backed dictatorship if I am too spoiled, too selfish here and now to live under the taxable level to avoid paying for war?

The main purpose of the U.S. war machine is to make sure that most Americans, especially the filthy rich elite, continue to plunder and hog the wealth of the world.

For me, as a conscientious objector to war, to pay federal income tax to train other Americans, largely the poor and people of color, would be more evil than being a soldier myself.

I keep my taxable income under the taxable level. For a sighted, single person under 65, the taxable level for this year is $7,450. I lived well all last year on $4,265. I love to live simply and refuse to pay for war.

-Don Schrader

Daily Lobo reader