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...
As a citizen of a country whose throne her son is heir to I say "Long live the Queen!"
ReplyDeleteCanada?
DeleteI think that is right, Samson.
DeleteElizabeth of Hanover, that German pirate? Nuts to that noise. It won't be over until Duke Francis, the heir of the Stuarts, is enthroned in the oval office.
ReplyDeleteGreg, I'm very sympathetic to your argument here, but thre is only so far we can hope to unwind the sins of the past!
DeleteI know a woman claims to be a Plantagenet.
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