Vancouver City Motto
Vancouver: where all of the squirrels are black, even if none of the people are.
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...
We've got a ton of black squirrels in Kent. I used to live in Brimfield, which is a rural township right next to Kent and that shares Kent's postal codes. I would see these critters all the time, and boy are they ugly, they look more ratlike and scraggly than the grey squirrel. Here's a little background of how they got to Kent.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kentohiohistory.org/squirrel/black_squirrel.html
I lived in Vancouver for a while. The squirrels are there for the nuts, who are in abundant supply.
ReplyDeleteThis weekend, it's even abundanter!
DeleteGene, just be glad the Vancouver Canucks stink and were bounced out of the playoffs in the first round, because if they had made it to the second round and been swept by the Kings this past week then you'd currently been in the equivalent of a citywide meltdown. Case in point: pictures of post 2011 Stanley Cup Finals in Vancouver.
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