Schulz should end fast

Bob Schulz has been battling state and local government in New York for more than 20 years, and has sometimes had the best of the argument. Convinced of the rightness of his various causes, he has, for a non-rich non-lawyer, been an effective protagonist in and out of court. But now, in shifting his attention to the national scene, and going on a hunger strike in Washington, D.C., Schulz has gone too far. In declaring his willingness to keep fasting until death, he undermines his own credibility.

Nor is Schulz's latest cause worth any such devotion. It concerns the federal income tax, which he and his supporters claim is illegal. They cite various arguments, the principal being that the purported ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913 was illegal.

Schulz is demanding that the federal government send experts to a Sept. 18 forum to debate these issues, or else he will keep fasting until death. There are several things wrong with this demand.

For one, it is wrong, except in extreme circumstances which do not exist in this country, to use life-and-death tactics in political and legal disputes. Threatening to kill yourself to get your own way is better than threatening to kill someone else, but that doesn't make it defensible. Nor will it do to try to make out that the government is responsible for Schulz's death if it fails to comply with his demands. He is responsible for his own actions.

Schulz should, as he has done before, engage in the judicial and political process to make his case. Unfortunately, as he is well aware, that system does not always deliver justice. For example, Schulz's legal arguments against backdoor borrowing in New York were soundly based on the clear language of the state constitution, and the Court of Appeals had no convincing reason for ruling against him.

But bad court decisions do not mean he should abandon the legal process, or the unglamorous political activism that innumerable other campaigners have engaged in throughout the history of this country, without falling prey to extremism.

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