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...
The abstract suggests the article is very interesting.
ReplyDeleteThat was my goal: to dupe the abstract reader into thinking the paper is interesting!
ReplyDeleteThen your strategy is good, though not good enough to convince the reader he must get a journal subscription! (although he might attempt to find out whether he can access it in the Universtity where he got his degree).
ReplyDeleteGene: This is a great article. Thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kevin!
ReplyDelete