Politics & Power Quote by Neal Boortz

Boortz frames taxation as a mugging with better stationery, and the bluntness is the point. The line doesn’t argue policy; it moralizes it. By starting with a premise almost everyone accepts (taking someone’s money “by force” is wrong) and then snapping government action into the same category, he tries to collapse a messy civic question into a single, intuitive gut-check. That’s classic talk-radio persuasion: make the listener feel they already know the answer, then treat dissent as a failure of character.

The phrase “dirty work” is the tell. It casts the state not as an institution we collectively authorize, but as a hired thug doing what polite people won’t do themselves. The subtext is accusatory: if you support redistribution or broad public spending, you’re not merely mistaken about economics; you’re outsourcing coercion to keep your hands clean. It’s a move designed to reverse the usual moral hierarchy where taxes fund schools, roads, and safety nets. Here, the tax-funded voter becomes the parasite; the taxpayer becomes the victim.

Context matters: Boortz rose as a libertarian-leaning radio personality in an era when conservatives increasingly treated “government” as a suspect actor rather than a democratic instrument. The argument leans on a strategic omission: government doesn’t just “take” money; it also defines property rights, enforces contracts, and supplies the infrastructure that makes “earned it” legible in the first place. By erasing that reciprocity, Boortz turns civic obligation into personal theft, a rhetorical shortcut that’s emotionally potent precisely because it’s ethically absolutist.