Columnist Mark Shields: Today's Low Taxes Are 'Fundamentally Un-American

We should probably establish this point early: when someone talks about the government's "revenues," he is mainly referring to the government's ability to tax. So when a syndicated columnist laments the low "revenues," he's really lamenting the low taxes. That's exactly what Mark Shields did on PBS on Friday. And he invoked the term "un-American" to do it.

"But we got 14 and a half percent in revenues," Shields said on Friday on "Inside Washington" while disagreeing with conservative Charles Krauthammer. "That is unsustainable and it’s unacceptable and it’s fundamentally un-American."

The 14 and a half percent he's referring to seems to be the 14 and a half percent the government took in tax revenue, as a percentage of GDP. Watch below via NewsBusters:

It seems to me that the high amount of spending (25 percent of GDP) is what's really "un-American. And As Noel Sheppard points out, the Founding Fathers would probably have a bone to pick with Shields:

Would our Founding Fathers agree with Shields's sentiments?

Hardly.

What folks like Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison would say is that almost half of the public not paying taxes while the other half shoulders all the burden is what's un-American.

But liberals like Shields don't see it that way.

For them, taxation is a means to redistribute from those that have to those that don't, a concept our Founding Fathers would have been appalled by.