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...
Yes. This is something I point out too. There are more crazy ideas afloat now than in the Middle Ages, and with less excuse (illiteracy for example).
ReplyDeleteSo on a site I frequent, one member asked why are super hero movies so popular, since they are so childish and stupid. (I told him he supplied the answer.) this quickly evolved into a discussion of "I agree except for the (insert franchise here) movies". From practically everyone!
ReplyDeleteFantasy is perfectly fine, Homer has monsters and gods, but I do find it amusing that with Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Pol Pot in living memory so many seem to need fantasy to imagine evil.