Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/147

CHAPTER 7. DOROTHY VISITS PHOENIX 134 believe in some thing differing from this dog-eat-dog system under which we live we have to act as if we believed it. This means that we cannot be a part of the system which lives upon Rent, Interest, Profit, and the weaknesses and vices of its members. If we mean business we cannot register for the draft, pay taxes for war, accept ration, social security, pension or subsidy from the government which we consider immoral. We will then have to simplify our lives and live on the land. We must be producers, not parasites. We cannot vote or ask for police protection but must know that "All things work together for good to those who love God." Despite our white man's arrogance, we must not permit ourselves to be deluded into thinking that we have something to offer the primitive people, such as the Hopi Indians, whose civilization without war and government can teach us many lessons.


 * I do not intend to pay any income tax now or in the future, and plan to picket your office on March 14th in protest against payment of taxes, not only for war and the bomb, but for the support of an anti-Christian government which denies the Sermon on the Mount daily.

Sincerely,

About this time I had a letter from a teacher in Fairhope, Ala. where I had taught in 1924. Her name was Miss DaPonte and she had refused to pay taxes. She told of some boys, Quakers whose parents I had taught when I was there, who had refused to register. The judge in Mobile told the boys: "Well, you pay your taxes, don't you? And a large amount of our taxes goes for war purposes. If you were consistent in carrying out this belief, you would also refuse to pay your taxes."



The main "shrine" of the cult which my wife and daughters follow is at Mt. Shasta in California. I had written every week to my family, and after the girls had been sufficiently indoctrinated in this cult no letters were written by them to me until 1949 when they met me in San Francisco. I did not blame them and even hoped that my wife would get over this infatuation with fake religion, as she had with numerous other cults. She had been raised in the atmosphere of envy of the rich, which is the motivation of too many radicals. Despite my talk of Tolstoy and refusal to cooperate with government, she had never appreciated the real basis of religion as given in the Sermon on the Mount. I was not sure if my girls received the letters and enclosures of articles I had written.

Now, after twelve years of separation I felt that morally my wife and I were divorced although legally we were married by the common law of New York state. I do not believe in either marriage or divorce by the state so naturally