Readers who would like some background information about Quakers might find helpful my review of Yount’s How the Quakers Invented America (published this month in the Journal for Peace & Justice Studies, v17, #1). I have copied it into Comments.
June 20, 2008
June 18, 2008
We got our economic stimulus check — sort of — well, some of it.
We recently recieved a check in the mail from the U.S. government. Only it wasn’t for the amount that an earlier postcard had indicated. Well, there was some small print that said it might be minus any amount that we owed the government. As readers of this blog already know, we are pacifists and war tax resisters because we cannot in good conscience pay for training and arming others to kill in our name (search my blog for more on this). So our check came up a few hundred dollars short of what was first promised. But this was no big surprise (sometimes they get the money, sometimes they don’t), and we follow our conscience in this not with certainty of the results (that is God’s will, not ours), but certain that we can not willingly cooperate with something that we believe supports such an evil. Note that we have nothing against taxes per se and would gladly pay our full amount if we could be assured that none of it would go for war. You can be certain that we will continue to be war tax resisters. We follow our conscience, not the calculations of the liklihood that government will or won’t get the money.