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...
Back in April...
ReplyDeleteat last..he dead eh? 102 is not small number. lucky him..
ReplyDeleteDidn't the NYT declare that God (the creator of ergot and its LSD component) was dead decades ago?
ReplyDelete"Back in April..."
ReplyDeleteWell, excuuuuuuuse me. I just found out, so I thought some CR readers might have missed it as well.
"God (the creator of ergot and its LSD component)"
LSD is synthesized from ergot fungus -- it is not a component of it.
I see that you are right again, Gene.
ReplyDeleteWhile I had recalled correctly that lysergic acid is an ergot component, I had not realized that the diethylamide of lysergic acid was artifically synthesized from it.
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