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...
What is that a picture of?
ReplyDeleteMurray Rothbard. It's a mouse pad.
DeleteAh, a mouse pad. I was sitting here thinking, "Hmm, I've never seen that book cover before". I'll admit, I did get a chuckle from the joke.
Delete"Murray Rothbard"
Come on man, you've got to give me a little more credit than that. My memory's bad, but not that bad. I'm not entirely demential yet.
Wait, what were we talking about?