St. Paul and I Agree...
Taxation is not theft: "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves." -- Romans 13 The key idea implicit here, and the one that turned me on the subject of whether or not taxation is theft, is that "every soul" owes obedience to the "governing authorities." Now, if that is a debt I truly owe , then, when those authorities levy the taxes they need to do the job of governing, I owe them those taxes, and attempts to collect them certainly do not constitute acts of theft. And obviously it doesn't matter at all, from this point of view, whether or not I "signed" any sort of "social contract." (In fact, the history of political thought since the Reformation can be read as an attempt to find a secular rep...
I've always (well, usually) been concerned re the position that obeying orders is no excuse for war crimes. What about self defense? If I kill someone only because otherwise he (or more likely, she) would have certainly killed me, I get off. OK, maybe if we're talking about me vs. 1000 of them, it's different. Any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteSelf-defense applies to killing the person who was going to kill you. It doesn't legally permit you to shoot A because otherwise B was going to shoot you!
ReplyDeleteInteresting--never thought of it that way.
ReplyDelete