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Here's an interesting quote from the New York Times: "When men get in the habit of helping themselves to the property of others, they cannot easily be cured of it."

You'll be stunned to learn that those words were in reference to income taxes and not thievery - mere semantics, of course. Unfortunately they were written nearly 100 years ago, in a 1909 editorial protesting the first federal income tax, to be precise.

That, as they say, was then, long before we became so inured to the notion of redistributing wealth.

Today, finding anyone on the Times' editorial side who doesn't love a good tax is a lot like locating Lindsay Lohan at a 12-step meeting. It just ain't happenin'. In fact, you're more likely to find a drug-free Tour de France cyclist than a journalist opposed to higher taxes.

They're only going with the flow, however. We've grown so accustomed to nuzzling up to the breast of the federal government that the Statue of Liberty needs a support bra.

A recent Tribune headline read: "The $1 trillion war." Top of the front page. Plenty ominous. It's lot of money, to be sure, and, aside from the military service of our young and our brave, big chunks of that trillion have gone to Halliburton and others at the trough, so we can be fairly certain we're not getting all of our money's worth.

But economists estimate we've spent about 10 times that amount fighting a longer-running "war on poverty," and the results are equally dubious.

How about our tax dollars for public education? Think we're winning the war there? We shovel piles of tax dollars onto a broken, dysfunctional system and hope for change. And they say intelligent design is a leap of faith.

Yet, as the New York Times prophesied, we're hooked on the fruit of others' toil and sweat, and right now, Democratic congressional leaders are licking their chops, as they prepare a host of tax hikes and new taxes altogether.

One of the more remarkable steps backward is the Democrats' move to raise the capital gains tax to 28 percent for now, with their eyes set on the Jimmy Carter-era rate of 39.6 percent. Carter's economy was one of our worst.

Though it's unwise to fly in the face of blind hatred, let's do so right now: President Bush's economic machinations have created one the best American economies in history. Tax revenues are at a remarkable 18.8 percent of gross domestic product. Tax revenues are up three years running, and the budget deficit has dropped to 1.5 percent of GDP.

A short hundred years ago, we were a tax-free land. Those days are long gone, of course. Now, the Democrats' addiction to higher taxes and their base's blind hatred of the president are about to drive a stake into the heart of an economy that's simply rocking. Perhaps that deserves an ominous headline as well.