Sam Harrelson

I have a friend who doesn’t care much about money (an ethos I envy but unfortunately, don’t share). He would give it away rather than bother with it, and takes advantage of every opportunity to donate to a good cause, like eschewing membership miles for charitable contributions. Consequent of his attitude about money, he doesn’t pay much attention to whether or not he over-pays his taxes each year, letting receipts for tax deductible items drift around, unaccounted for. This oversight amounts to nothing less than a negative donation, contributing to a cause that he (and I) vehemently oppose: the U.S. government’s military aggression in Iraq. At least 17% of your tax dollars go to pay the defense budget, not including the added cost of financing the billions of dollars in debt that our deficit requires. If you dissent to this war, then you have a responsibility, in my estimation, to not pay any more taxes than you are legally required.

I bring this up here because of the stunningly noble gesture on the part of Flemish author Paul Verhaeghen, who now lives in the United States, teaching at Syracuse University. According to a press release at Dalkey Archive Press, who is soon publishing his novel, Omega Minor, Verhaeghen recently “accepted the Flemish Culture Award for Fiction, but rejected the attached prize money of 12,500 euros.”

His words:

“When I was writing Omega Minor, I would never have guessed that the country I live in, the United States of America, would ever resemble Germany in the 1930s. Now there are concentration camps for presumed enemies of the regime—more than 83,000 people have been detained since 9/11, and 14,000 are still ‘in custody’—and just like the Nazis, who exported the horror to Poland, the American government detains these people in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Egypt, on Cuba, and in countless other places. There are again torture rooms, and eager torturers, and the architect of the legal underpinnings of torture is now attorney general…

I have made the calculation. If I would accept the 12,500 euros associated with this award, about five thousand dollars would flow into the American Treasury. I could pretend that this money will be used to finance public schools or medical care, or will help to alleviate the suffering of the forty million Americans who live below the poverty line. But who would I be kidding? The president just asked Congress for an extra 120 billion in emergency funds for the war. I gladly accept the award, but the money—no, that I cannot accept. This money would be paid for in human blood.”