And by the way, Michael Falzon is not a politician. He is an ex-politician. Hence my softer stance. :-)

I understand your point but cannot identify with it because I was not exposed to it myself.

It’s interesting you say we should be more judgmental about politicians and not less. I used to think that the penalties for breaking the law should be twice as harsh if you are a politician or a policeman than if you are a normal citizen — and I think there is a part of me that still believes that — but I leave it to the Judges in our courts to be judgmental, because they are better at it than I am.

You think we should be less judgmental about them, but if we in Malta were any less judgmental about our politicians, the next step would be getting away literally with murder – which back in the 1980s, they actually did.

We need to be more judgmental about politicians, not less judgmental.

Of course a moral code can be formed independently of religion. Mine certainly was. I remember as a child during an interminable RE lesson in which our class was told that we shouldn’t lie because it puts another thorn in Jesus’s crown, that surely this was wrong, and that the reason we shouldn’t lie is because it hurts others, not hurts Jesus. I must have been about eight or nine, but along the way I have met so many grown-ups who lie horribly because they don’t believe in Jesus anymore.

That’s the separation between moral code and religion that I am talking about here, the one you don’t wish to understand.

Seeing the light is not enough. That is the easy part. Doing something good to compensate for one’s crimes (for instance giving to charity some of the money you stole through tax evasion), now that’s the difficult part. Difficult for amoral misers, that is.

One more thing. I only adopt a holier than thou attitude when evidently I am “holier”. That’s one of the benefits of being a moral person. No one can point fingers back at you.

That is exactly what happens in Malta, hence the disaster.

You are one such example. You literally cannot understand the concept of a moral code outside the framework of religion, or that a religious person may have a moral code which was shaped outside that religion and exists separately to and independently of that religion.

Let’s just go back to point one, shall we? Michael Falzon was a minister after 1987.

So precisely because he WAS a minister, whether the tax rate was immorally high, medium, average or wonderfully low is irrelevant.

You can’t be a minister and evade tax.

Yes, the upper tax rate pre 1987 was immorally high. I don’t blame the people who did what they could to evade a tax rate of 90%.

But not if they were ministers. If they were ministers, the situation was different. Why? Because they make the tax rate. And they collect taxes from others.

And they hold positions of public trust.

You clearly have a lot of difficulty separating the issues. Your twin problem here is, I suspect, religion and friendship with Michael Falzon.

So you are willfully blind. And this is a waste of time.

There are no absolutes in morality. Perhaps Michael Falzon did not, like you, believe that the PN had lowered the tax rate enough. Perhaps he thought the post-1987 tax rate was still immorally high. In that case, according to you, he would have been justified to retain his monies in Switzerland.

We cannot behave on the basis of what we personally feel or believe. If that were the case, then anything would go. The law exists to protect us all, and for as long as it has grown out of the democratic process and is equal before us all (and no animals are more equal than others), then we should respect it. Otherwise it would simply be a free for all.

Obedience of the law, regardless of what law it is and irrespective of the circumstances, is in itself immoral and dangerous.

There are many examples from 20th century history, and you don’t need me to explain them.

Prosecuting women for having a backstreet abortion
Prosecuting men for having sex together
Prosecuting somebody for committing adultery
Reporting a hungry man to the police for stealing a loaf of bread
Rounding up Jews for the gas chambers because it was against the law not to rout them out

Need I go on?

Before 1987 you were looking at an income tax rate of around 90% on anything above the equivalent of a normal salary. That was completely immoral, and the reason why tax evasion was rampant and completely justified. More to the point, it was why many people didn’t bother making money unless they could hide it.

The incoming PN government realised this and set about slashing the upper tax bracket. Beyond that point it was no longer immoral to seize the tax. It became immoral not to pay it.

One of the really serious problems afflicting this country is that morality is only taught through religion.

Look at the results, all around you.

A person’s moral code should never be shaped in the context of religious belief, even if he is raised in religious belief.