Louis Roney: Running from taxes

• Are we just plain nuts? If we exempt one half of the population from paying taxes, we are turning over the government to those who pay nothing but can vote anything they wish, and we tax payers will foot the bill. Well, who then will remain to make a majority to vote against them, and put a stop to their giveaway gravy-train? If they want a bridge to the moon, they can vote for it all right, and I guess the rest of us had better accept the fact that we are trapped on a crazy planet.

Hadn’t we best fix this fatal misalignment? Somewhere in the distant past, voting depended upon having paid taxes. But in our “superior modern thinking,” we let non-payers decide the use of taxpayers’ lucre. Franklin D. Roosevelt started it and Obama has certainly registered no complaints.

• The season is on! Long ago the boys at Eton and Harrow started bruising each other in violent rugby games. The school officials somehow decided that rugby was ready and able to use up manly hormones that otherwise might lead to warfare. Rugby evolved into modern-day football and may still be substituting for young men killing each other. We are now in the middle of football season and through TV, the American public is greatly involved with the thousands of players who are providing proof of their male hormones by whacking each other. Oh well! Boys will be boys, and the girls love what’s left at seasons end. I played high school football at Winter Park High School and I don’t imagine that my IQ soared after an afternoon or evening of head butting. I did not continue to play football when I got to Harvard, where the players were at least 30 pounds heavier than my 160 pounds and I was concerned more with my scholarship-level grades than my modest athletic prowess.

Incidentally, football never kept me, or most of my friends, out of World War II, where boys of every size were sacrificed. In Roman times the citizens built a huge coliseum where their captives in battle provided entertainment by fighting barehanded against the fiercest of lions. I understand there wasn’t much betting on the outcome of those affairs.

That we reasonable “moderns” exercise our need for competition over the chess board, Internet, or badminton net says —I guess—something about human progress, or cowardess —take your pick.

• Important people: You know lots of important people. If you don’t believe it, just ask yourself, “Who are the people who are important to you?” You know your mother who brought you into this world, and probably you know your father too. However, there is a saying, “It’s a wise child who knows his own father.” If you can’t think of anyone else, remember the person who runs the deli, and the mechanic who takes care of your car, the nice person who cleans your teeth, the kid who cuts your grass, the person who trims your dog, the nurse who gives you flu shots, the bank cashier who handles your money, and a host of other reliable people who keep your life orderly, safe and comfortable. These people may not seem important to you individually, but collectively they help to make up your important personal lifestyle. As you get older you may find that your list grows necessarily longer, as you can’t do for yourself all of the things you used to do.

Most of us men, no doubt, subconsciously recognizing that our hook-up with a “better half” is an expression of hope that “two are actually better than one”—particularly if one of them is a female!

Boys are told incessantly to “be reliable” but Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” is a risky business unless you take the Scout motto “Be prepared” seriously indeed, and are prepared. My grandmother told me, “Anyone who calls himself ‘self-sufficient’ is a damn fool!”

All of the people who do for you what you can’t do for yourself are “important people” in your life and all deserve thanks— and don’t forget it!