The Nutty Left

In preface, I've been somewhat busy this week. I'm trying to catch up on some spring-cleaning kinds of things around the house--plant my vegetable garden, weed the poolside landscaping, clean out the pool filters, wash the windows, defrost the freezer. Couple all that with the regular household stuff--laundry, mowing the yard, running here and there--and a need to get my truck in for servicing (desperately overdue), and preparing for my Dad's visit next week, and I haven't put in as much time here as I might otherwise.

However, I did come across a couple of articles which struck me as iconic of the Nutty Left--and perhaps especially relevant as coming right after my post regarding Kos. Today's Arizona Republic has an item discussing the lefty war protesters who are not filing their tax returns to prevent the military from getting anything from their labor. The gist of their belief is that if more money was spent on social programs (foreign and domestic, I presume), then the military would would not be necessary. So they withhold their taxes and take whatever consequences come their way.

Question: If I believed the antithesis of their position--that more military, not less was a good thing, and that what was damaging our economy and society in general was the plethora of social programs--would I too be justified in withholding my financial contribution to our government?

The other item this morning was something I saw on Instapundit. Matthew Yglesias has a post on the "Inheritance/Death Tax" (chose your own descriptor). In this post, Matthew argues in regard to a concern of the effect of the Inheritance Tax on small businessmen--"fuck the small businessman". Nice, Matthew. Nice.

But here's a question for Matthew: If I were a lefty running a socially-conscious small business--perhaps a coffee shop--at what point would my socially aware behavior (profit-sharing, donations to the community, etc) run up against my success as a businessman (business profits)? When do my employees go from appreciating what I'm doing for them and the community, and transition to stealing from me because I've become "The Man"? IOW, where is the line between lefty love, and simply being fucked?