Current Working Pile
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...
Dear Prof. Callahan,
ReplyDeleteWho is the author of the book on Say's Law ? (I suppose all the books here are worth reading, since they are on your working pile).
Are, in your view, Oakeshott's writings the best way to learn political philosophy ?
"Who is the author of the book on Say's Law?"
DeleteThomas Sowell.
"I suppose all the books here are worth reading, since they are on your working pile."
Some things are there because I *ought* to read them, so I don't yet know if they are worth reading!
"Are, in your view, Oakeshott's writings the best way to learn political philosophy?"
I'd pick Voegelin over Oakeshott.
Thank you for your answers. I have never read Voegelin, I will.
DeleteFor Say's law, I loved Hutt's Rahabilitation so much, I thought of translating the book into french. I couldn't finish Sowell's.
Start at the bottom. You'll thank me later.
ReplyDeleteBlackadder, are you commenting on a general property of working piles, or on my pile in particular?
DeleteMy comment was specifically about the desirability of reading Walker Percy, not about a general strategy for dealing with working piles.
DeleteSo I gave up my blog reading for Lent, and I happened to see the same book Blackadder did, a few months later. What'd you think?
ReplyDeleteSeemed OK, but I haven't been able to finish works of fiction in years now: I have too much work reading. I get 100 pages in and can't get back to it.
Delete