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'm not being sarcastic. I thought if a political body does this kind of thing, it's not mass murder, but war? I.e. you reject my classification of taxation as "theft," but are you OK with me calling war "mass murder"?
ReplyDeleteBob, no, war is not mass murder. For instance, if the Candadians were invading Brooklyn and I killed twenty of them, that would NOT be mass murder, but just killing in a war of defense. When, however, troops strike from the air, without offering any chance of surrender, at a bunch of travelers who they suspect might be the enemy, THAT's mass murder. (Probably third degree homicide, to be precise -- reckless.)
ReplyDeleteThis is, as I see it, a major problem with declaring "The State is Evil!": the government of Switzerland taking 20% of incomes for providing peaceful, very decent governance becomes no different than Mugabe slaughtering white Zimbabwean farmers and stealing their farms. Fighting a necessary war in a decent fashion becomes no different than fighting an unnecessary war in an indecent fashion.