Afterthought on Friedman on Palin

Tom Friedman rightly fulminates against Sarah Palin's notion that taxes are "unpatriotic" (link). Inter alia:

I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.

He might have addded that there is at least one more way to finance all these ventures. and that is to monetize the debt--politespeak for turning on the printing press and letting inflation roll (or flame, or explode, or whatever is your metaphor of choice). We haven't yet become Zimbabwe or the Weimar Republic or (all time champion?) Hungary, but if we insist on a policy of not paying our bills, sooner or later we are going have to start heading that direction. My Taft-Republican father liked to remember the (alleged) FDR slogan: "We will tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect." If only.