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2008-03-04 issue:

Stop war by withholding taxes

by Donald D. Kaufman, Newton, Kan.

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If enough of us withhold from war and pay for peace, we can stop the harm. War-tax resistance is not a passive or unethical tax avoidance but an act of conscience that everyone can do. The cross of Jesus as nonviolence and compassion is our model for hope and change.

Individuals shoulder great responsibility for warfare and for peace. At times the most effective way to take responsibility is refusal to collaborate, as Franz Jaggerstatter did in Hitler’s Austria in 1943. How can we take a stand against a government that leads its citizens into committing murder? The task is to be reform-minded, to live in an ethical way and progressively to make unthinkable the coercion of conscience by the majority who put their faith in military or violent solutions.

Like Jeremiah, let us unmask the illusions of power by being servants of hope among the vulnerable and wounded.