By: Adrianne Zhugarb

Let’s face it, it’s not fun paying taxes. That’s why there’s an entire profession (accountants) hired to deal with the average layman’s taxes. But we’ve been pumped since childhood with these misconceptions and misinformation about how necessary and unavoidable it is to pay taxes. And for some time now we’ve all bought it. But no longer. A few courageous individuals (corporations are people!) have begun speaking out against the tyrannical influences of our repressive government using taxes to herd us into a Communist-Nanny State. And I must say, Bravo!

GE, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Apple, Cisco, Citigroup, AIG, Red Hat, Inc., Amazon, NRG Energy, among countless companies that pay less than 20% in taxes, and then even more that receive more tax benefits than they actually pay. These are our American heroes, not the ones that go out and fight, and die, on battlefields only to come home to bourgeois lifestyles filled with monogamy, 9-to5 jobs, raising kids, and then paying their taxes. It’s just un-American, even ungodly. They just have to be our heroes, because of their success, their profits, their ruthless ambitions to obtain whatever they want despite the consequences, despite the human rights violations, despite popular hatred.

In a time when people are protesting the egregious amounts of wealth disparity further polarizing our country, and all countries for that matter, we should be canonizing those individuals that have been expressing their own freedom rather than the freedom of their countries. And why not? Overt nationalism, the celebration of countries, has led to countless wars, tyrannies, and oppression. So in the land of the free it only makes sense that individuals express their freedom through ensuring the government will not become too big for its britches.

That’s why we need more brave individuals to join in the fight against our horrible, tyrannical government. The Federal Government, ensured with paving roads, establishing an education system, building hospitals, providing national security through the military, and making sure our meat isn’t poisoned, among other things, are just forms of constricting our freedom. Who are they to say that we shouldn’t be allowed to eat food that might kill us, drive roads that are undriveable, and go uneducated? Well, these courageous corporations have fought back against our government by ensuring our future may very well be that free, and I for one and now proud to say I’m an American.

So if you want your freedom and can’t really define it surpass a third-grader’s interpretation of what it means to be free, then join in with these corporations by not paying taxes. It’s not the right thing to do, it’s the patriotic thing to do.