TP Mindset in Shakespeare

[grixit]

This is not about taxes, but it's about the same mindset. Shakespeare's Henry V, which takes its material from popular histories of the time, presents the young king as a willful man who knows what he wants to do and just needs to discover that it is in fact the right thing to do.

What he wants to do is invade France and take over. So he gets a bunch of supposed legal experts and orders them to discover some justification. So they go way back in french law-- no frankish tribal law, that is the law held by some of the frankish leaders back when they were squatters on what was still Gaul. And that law said hey, you can't inherit power and property from your mother. Which had happened in the lineage of the then french king.

Conclusion, the french king was nothing but a fraudster, who was legally obligated to step down and give up the throne on demand. And if he didn't then Henry was permitted to arrest his bond, declare collateral estoppel, seek justice with a common law militia, etc, etc.

This was of course ignoring the names of Matilda and Eleanor that figured in Henry's own lineage. And also ignoring a few legal developments that had happened since the time of the salians, little things like: the establishment of the Frankish Empire and the Merovingan Dynasty, the carolingian coup, the arrangements with the church, the generations of partition and reunification, the final division of the empire into what would become France and Germany, the elevation of Hugh Capet, and the emergence of the Valois family.

But never mind all that, whatever seems to say what he wants to hear, is the real law.

[Duke2Earl]

Your point, which is well taken, is that people believe what they want to believe. Unfortunately, this character flaw is not limited to tax protesters. I deal with it in my clients everyday. They concede (grudingly) that the income tax applies, but all expenses are deductible, all losses are allowable, slight of hand always works, and no taxes need be paid when the problem is viewed from the appropriate angle. That angle is best viewed by piling up all volumes of the Code and regs, balancing on one foot on the resulting pile, placing the dubious tax opinion issued by Dewey, Cheatem and Howe on the floor, closing at least one eye and casting all scruples to the four winds.

[Gregg]

Your point, which is well taken, is that people believe what they want to believe. Unfortunately, this character flaw is not limited to tax protesters. I deal with it in my clients everyday. They concede (grudingly) that the income tax applies, but all expenses are deductible, all losses are allowable, slight of hand always works, and no taxes need be paid when the problem is viewed from the appropriate angle. That angle is best viewed by piling up all volumes of the Code and regs, balancing on one foot on the resulting pile, placing the dubious tax opinion issued by Dewey, Cheatem and Howe on the floor, closing at least one eye and casting all scruples to the four winds.

That's the difference between Accounting and Bookkeeping, right?

[Judge Roy Bean]

As Judge Easterbrook so eloquently put it almost 25 years ago:

Some people believe with great fervor preposterous things that just happen to coincide with their self-interest. ... The government may not prohibit the holding of these beliefs, but it may penalize people who act on them.

Coleman v. Commissioner, 791 F.2d 68 (7th Cir. 1986)