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Voluntary

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Are you kidding? It would be a wonderful miracle if all charitable contributions were voluntary. If you're a taxpaying citizen, particularly American, you, your parents and grandparents have been making huge involuntary charitable contributions with their income taxes for nearly a century. They've been paying ever-increasing amounts in charity for its own poor and sick residents, legal and otherwise. But let's just explore those massive and involuntary gifts over many, many years from American taxpayers to foreign nations.

When World War I broke out in 1914, America stayed officially neutral for three years. However, during that time, the U.S. was shipping taxpayer-paid war supplies to England and France. It became very public in 1915, when the unarmed ocean liner SS Lusitania, on its way from the U.S. to England, was sunk by a German U-boat. The Germans claimed the ship had munitions aboard. Whether that was true or not, the involuntary help by American taxpayers cost the lives of 1,500 passengers and crew, including many American.

In 1917, after many German attacks at sea and alleged sabotage in U.S. industry, war was declared on Germany. Was it involuntary charity when the U.S. sent a million of its soldiers and billions in supplies to keep England and France from losing the war? When 50,000 U.S. soldiers died to help the Allies, were their American families making involuntary charity contributions? Then, after the German surrender in 1918, the U.S. sent more billions for recovery and reconstruction to England, France, Russia and former enemy, Germany.

Is it time for the quote: those who never learn from the lessons of history are forced to repeat it? You bet! Less that 20 years later, Germany was back at war, along with their little pals from Nippon. And once again, until the U.S. could be dragged into it, taxpayers came up with the Lend-Lease plan, which didn't have much to do with either word. What it entailed were massive supplies of goods and weapons to England and Soviet Russia to keep them from being defeated by Germany, and to free China from brutal Japanese occupation with no repayment ever received. As Yogi Berra would say, it was deja vu all over again.

And now, almost a decade into the 21st Century, it has happened over and over and over again, with no end in sight, and no history learned by the politicians in Washington who feel free to give away unlimited amounts of taxpayer money. Since 1917, it has been never-ending war, killing, destruction,

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