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Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?

Gore Vidal

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
GORE VIDAL

Class Genius heavy Ourselves Rule System
Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, ‘Well, so-and-so will like this,’ which you do when you’re younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.
GORE VIDAL

Contemporary Realize Young Yourself
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
GORE VIDAL

Active Literature Lose Time Virtue World Writing
Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel’s thriller ‘Seven Days in May,’ later a film. The story: a jingo based on the real-life Admiral Arthur Radford plans a military coup to take over the White House.
GORE VIDAL

Enjoyment Life Military Reality Story
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
GORE VIDAL

Human Myself People Problem Solution
Policemen are seldom tried for their crimes, or indeed, held responsible for what they do, which disturbs the peace and causes distress among the orderly.
GORE VIDAL

Crime Disturb Order Peace Police Responsibility
Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriously whether or not to run as an independent because I was not eager to be saddled with the Democratic Party, because any party label is committing.
GORE VIDAL

Commitment Democracy Government Independent Party Politics Serious
He who is last had best laugh.
GORE VIDAL

End Himself Laughter
In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king’s death or upon the identity of his successor.
GORE VIDAL

Capital Death Himself Offense Success Time
Corporations must pay tax.
GORE VIDAL

Corporation Pay Tax
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
GORE VIDAL

Bank Loyalty President
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.
GORE VIDAL

Elimination Management Media Object Opinion World
The Pentagon talks about our power to ‘overkill’ Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps forty-eight times. For my tax money, it is sufficient to overkill them once.
GORE VIDAL

Money Talk Tax Time
On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia.
GORE VIDAL

Congress Form Man Weight
Obama just came swiftly out of nowhere, which was a relief to those of us who care about the Republic, and at first he seemed a very good thing.
GORE VIDAL

Goodness Government Himself Politics President Public relief
Certainly ‘The Judgment of Paris’ was the novel in which I found my own voice.
GORE VIDAL

Finding Judgement Myself Novel Voice
In essence, Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism Act would set up a national police force, over the long-dead bodies of the founders.
GORE VIDAL

Act Finding Force National Police
I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased behaving like Nazis, no comparison would come to mind.
GORE VIDAL

Behave Comparison Mindset Myself Team
Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
GORE VIDAL

Age One Liner Place Sex
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL

Adult Consent Myself
As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a police state, at least in a police city.
GORE VIDAL

Civil Finding Liberty Live Police
Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues will take out our cities, presumably from spaceships.
GORE VIDAL

Assumption Enemy Ourselves Space Target
By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We also had most of the money. America’s hegemony lasted exactly five years.
GORE VIDAL

Damage End Greatness Nation Powerful War
What I like least about myself is my belligerence.
GORE VIDAL

Character Myself Nature
There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.
GORE VIDAL

Impulse People Person Practice Sexual
A friend was surprised to hear me say that there was not one moment of my past that I would like to relive.
GORE VIDAL

Friendship Moments Myself Past Surprise
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
GORE VIDAL

Age Believe Exercise Imagination Spirit

Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?

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Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?

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