Paying Taxes in the DOGE ERA: Moral Duty, Religious Experience, or Place of Protest?

Straight White American Jesus

Axis Mundi Media: Bradley Onishi + Daniel Miller

News, Politics

4.7 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 800-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ In this episode of Straight White American Jesus, Brad sits down with Dr. Ruth Braunstein, professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of My Tax Dollars. Together, they explore an unexpected question: Can paying taxes be a moral act? Far from being a dry civic obligation, Braunstein argues that taxation can serve as a collective ritual—one that reflects our values, builds solidarity, and fuels moral debate. The conversation traces the historical evolution of tax narratives in the U.S., from patriotic propaganda during World War II to the rise of anti-tax movements tied to abortion, war, and distrust in government. They also unpack the cultural shift from taxes as a civic duty to something to be avoided or even bragged about, as seen in Donald Trump’s infamous comment on dodging taxes. Throughout the episode, Braunstein sheds light on how Americans’ attitudes toward taxation reveal deeper fault lines around democracy, governance, and belonging. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 Check out BetterHelp and use my code SWA for a great deal: www.betterhelp.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Axis Mundi.
0:13.6	What could be more boring or divisive than paying taxes?
0:18.8	Taxes are something that we all do begrudgingly. We can tell our friends at work around the water cooler about how Uncle Sam is bleeding as dry. But what if the commonality of paying taxes is what makes them sacred? What if the ritual of paying taxes to our federal government and other
0:38.5	entities is somehow what binds us together as Americans, who not only begrudged the fact that we have
0:45.9	to pay, but RLC United and the fact that we are contributing to a government that offers services?
0:52.3	What if, as Ruth Bronsen argues in her new book,
0:55.4	my tax dollars, paying taxes is a kind of collective ritual, something we do individually together.
1:02.7	And what if it's a way to understand the moral issues that divide us as a country?
1:08.3	To me, the issue of taxes has come into a new relief in light of Doge and the Trump
1:14.3	administration's attempts to dismantle the federal government. We have someone in office who boasts about
1:20.5	avoiding taxes, somebody who's made a virtue out of not paying into the national pot. That person is now our president,
1:29.2	and he's equipped a team of people
1:31.0	to dismantle the services, the programs,
1:34.7	the policies, and the institutions that help to protect us,
1:39.3	whether it's through foreign aid,
1:41.4	whether it's through Medicare or Medicaid,
1:43.6	whether it's through Social Security,
1:45.9	on down the road to national parks.
1:49.4	Today I welcome Ruth Bronstein to the program, faculty at Johns Hopkins University, the author
1:55.5	of many works on Christian nationalism and political sociology, and the author of a new book called My Tax Dollars from Princeton University Press
2:04.7	that analyzes all of this and more.
2:08.1	I'm Brad O'Nishi, and this is Straight White American Jesus.
	...

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