reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint
Since you have come to us(me) with a seemingly genuine inquisitve and non combative stance, I will offer you my perspective for your own
'enlightnment' and for my own amusement. (quotes due to my perhaps nieve assumption that i am capable of enlightening you, and if i could, that
you would be capable of being 'enlightened, as both are unknowns')
Firstly, I would not define myself narrowly as a 'tax protester'. My opposition to taxation is not a single instance of moral discrimination,
springing up randomly, but is instead a logical and integral extension of my first, most basic and fundamental philisophical principals. If truth
really does exist, and is measured by man in relation to reality only, and nothing else, then first principals that are shown, or revealed and
accepted to be true, are invoiable. One of these first principals that i have discovered (i say one as this principal is just the logical extension
of more basic metaphyical rules that i wont get into here) is the 'Non Aggression Principal'(NAP).
We all understand the NAP fundamentally, as were were all brought up with it and taught its simple wisdom from infantcy. The NAP states that you
should not hit others, to respect their ownership of their bodies. The NAP states that your toys are you own, and that which you produce belongs to
you, and no others. Thus the NAP also includes stealing, as taking from another that which is justly theirs violates their self ownership, and by
extension the ownership of their bodies.
Dont hit, dont streal, whats yours is yours and whats mine is mine. Simple stuff, acknowledged by most sane people as good rules to live by. Im sure
most reading this now live by those very rules. They dont attack their neighbors, they dont steal cars, and they expect their lawnmower to be in the
spot the left it, and would be morally outraged if someone violated their property by stealing that lawnmower, as it rightly belonged to them.
Sorry for the preamble, but its key - taxation is a *gross* violation of the NAP, which to many of us, is inviolable.
Since I own my body, and the consequences of its actions, I am the rightful owner of everything that it produces. If I am a farmer, and I lay claim
to a patch of uninhabited land, and through my skill and input, i produce wheat that
would not have existed without my expenditure of time and
skill, i, and only i, are the rightful owner of that wheat, or anything else i produce via my willful existense.
If I own what I produce, if mine is whats mine, then any attempt to take it from my rightful possession *must* use force and thus violate the NAP. If
I produce wheat, and another lays claim to it, they must rely on force to make me relinquish what is rightfully mine. If the only rightful claim to
my surplus is that I produced it, any claims to the contrary must be unjust.
So kindergarten morality, applied evenly to all situations and without exceptions, must exclude taxation, as taxation is just another word for the
violent extortion of funds, or theft. TAXATION = THEFT, as, fundamentally, theft is taking what is not yours without consent.
You do not have my consent to steal half of my income, no matter how glorious and virtuous you claim your intentions may be. I will pay, of course,
as I see clearly the gun pointed at my neck in the case that I refuse to fund another evil war, another pointless debt program, another
counterproductive wealth distribution scheme. I will pay the taxman just as I would pay the mafia thug who comes for protection money, not
prentending in some way that I want to pay him for 'the greater good', but realizing that this is nothing more than a shakedown. And at least the
mafia makes no claim to virtue, like your tax collection rackets do.
I dont care what you do with my stolen money. It could be the most noble and virtuous cause imagined, and i still wouldnt care, as nobility and
virtue are destroyed in the very act of stealing from me. I care not that the mafia may spend some of my extorted funds to pay for a guys funeral who
they just wacked, just as i care not that some homeless fellow might get a bowl of soup out of my stolen funds. If I wanted to pay for such things, i
would do so of my own free will.
That you claim a 'social contract' that i never signed is meaningless to me. I simply do not consent to your claim over what is rightfully mine -
that which would never have existed if not for my input. Its MINE, not yours, and the reason you need an IRS packing heat is because you know youre a
gang of thieves in stolen suits who no one would give a cent to, if not for the threat of life ending consequences for non compliance.
TAXATION = THEFT. When you understand this basic reality, you might understand why there are so many who are refusing to pay you.