What is Consent?

The 4th of July is always a great holiday for people to get self-righteous about how the founders, like, totally agreed with everything they believe in, and the bloviating on both sides happens like clockwork.  T.J.  is everyone’s best friend, despite the fact that he should be reviled by both sides for a couple of reasons that aren’t worth going into right here – that’s what comments are for, right?

In that vein, Craig put up an interesting piece over at MTPolitics, and points out some cherry-picking of the Declaration of Independence that happens on the left, and proceeds to do the same thing to it himself.  One part in particular caught my eye. Here, he quotes a part of the Declaration in a way that couldn’t be any more out of context:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: That’s kind of a convenient one to forget, wouldn’t you say?

“No Taxation Without Representation,” anyone? Craig’s got a knee-jerk reaction to taxation of any kind, and often refers to it as the government basically taking money out of his pocket.  That’s all well and good, but that wasn’t exactly the rub that the colonists had against the British.  It was the whole “Representation” part.

So, the question is, now that we’re actually represented in government (last time I checked), does that constitute consent?  In Constitutional terms, it seems to be good enough.  Democracy’s a messy process, and things take a while.  So if we’re being taxed too heavily (or spending too much), we kick the bums out, right?

What if we didn’t vote for the people who are running things?  Should we be able to check off a form on our W-2 that says “I didn’t vote for the current government,” and then be able to write off everything?  Should Craig be able to write off the portion of his taxes that go to Public Education, simply because he doesn’t like it?

Is that the kind of consent that you’re talking about, Craig?  Feel free to use the comments to elaborate.