"An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition." - Michael Korda
All during this past presidential campaign I heard some very disturbing things that were said by people who are on the surface religious, in the sense that they attend church weekly and profess to study the Bible. I'm speaking of Christians, many of whom I personally know.
I don't know how people can think of themselves as God-loving and turn right around and throw one of His Commandments right back in His face. I'm not talking about the vast majority of us who in a fit of weakness commit a sin or sins against a Commandment. We've all done that, but not deliberately out of jealousy and hate. This last political campaign brought out in the open the most vicious, vile, hostile class hatred that I've ever witnessed, making envy and anger in the Great Depression with its 30 percent unemployment pale by comparison.
Every one of you who've used the term "fair share" when accusing someone of not paying enough income taxes is guilty of envy and avarice and if you don't know it, you should. Glossing it over with, "I don't care for myself - it's the poor people I'm concerned about" doesn't cut it. Hiding behind the have-nots as an excuse for hypocritical and envious statements is an attempt to take the spotlight away from your own failures. To take something away from someone just because you think they have too much is a sin of envy - covetousness. Somehow, the millions of you out there who are guilty of this seem to feel its OK as long as you all stick together.
Now, if you think I am defending the super-rich you are dead wrong. I think as a class of people they are vile. But the tax laws, which are supposed to be written by our elected Congress persons, who are routinely corrupted by lobbyists, are responsible for that which makes possible the obscene accumulation of money and the power that goes with it. I personally have no quarrel with those who actually earn big money, but I have contempt for idle speculators who add no tangible value to what they buy and resell, such as oil and other critical resources. These leeches, plus Wall Street and its fellow banking travelers, are the real rotten culprits. Ah, but earners making $400,000 per year are easier targets.
So what am I driving at in this essay besides exposing millions of religious hypocrites, even in my own church, who think nothing of coveting their neighbor's goods or resenting their neighbor's success? I'm driving at making the point that this sinful envy is brought about by a deliberate and successful campaign by supporters of President Obama to deflect you citizens away from his super-rich buddies, the real culprits, who are responsible for greater and greater wealth falling into fewer and fewer hands.
Obama is throwing the creative-working class, those making between $150,000 and $1 million per year, to the blood-sucking wolves knowing full well that this is the class which hires the most employees (but didn't vote for him). He will protect his huge money supporters like General Electric, who along with other worldwide giants avoids most of its U. S. income taxes through loopholes in the tax code. Here again, the incompetence of our congress persons is responsible for faceless, unelected bureaucrats writing our tax code, like those who wrote Obamacare. Tax-loophole lobbyists eat these bureaucrats for lunch.
To further explore religious hypocrisy it is known and has been published by both the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative Heritage Foundation that government could tax 100 percent of all income from those of us making $250,000 or more per year and maybe that money would run our government for six weeks. So still wanting to increase their taxes must be for envious and punishment reasons, right? Admit it! Do you think the 47 percent of our population who pay zero income taxes are paying their fair share?
Until we citizens rediscover personal integrity with a fresh dose of Bible renewal, specifically digesting the Ten Commandments, our nation is kaput!
• Bob Thomas is a retired high-tech industrialist who later served on the Carson City School Board, the state welfare board, the airport authority and as a state assemblyman. His website is www.worldclassentrepreneur.com.