1/7/2014
“If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized.” Lysander Spooner
Facebook Exchange:
Stephanie H Love this! However, I can very easily see someone arguing that you can’t just declare a government without voter permission. I would love to know how to debate that the government is indeed stealing.
John H Everything you have been taught in government schools about democracy being wonderful is wrong. Voting is a siege mentality and barbarism. Voting is one town attacking another town, confiscating their stuff, and enslaving the inhabitants, only replace the initial attack with a head count and then the consequences of the siege and the consequences of disobeying are the same. The bigger army says to the smaller army “We are bigger and stronger than you are. We could wipe you out, so you might as well accept our domination and save your own lives. We will take your stuff and enslave you (taxation), but at least you won’t be dead or in prison.” The voting majority are the triumphant insurgents, and the voting minority are the vanquished who must concede to the wishes of their dominators. The scenario is pure barbarism. Might makes right. You would not go to your neighbor with a firearm and demand his/her money, but you are encouraged to go into a sanitized voting booth, cast a vote to take your neighbor’s money (taxation), and hire a monopoly organization’s thugs (government IRS and police) to do your mugging for you. Contrast that with individual rights and the non-aggression principle, that the only legitimate political power is 100% over yourself and 0% over anyone else. Then each individual is entitled to his/her own life and the fruits of his/her own labor. The result is a civilized society with nobody’s life or property threatened by being up for a vote.
Obviously, I simplified this down to the crucial point. Impossible to address self-defense, national defense, police, fire, roads, courts, and everything else in one brief Facebook post.
Thomas: The description by John is accurate in a particular frame. When government is the focal point of decisions and action affecting the group, and authorized to enforce the decisions of a majority, determined by vote, the government is, in fact, enforcing the will of the majority upon the minority.
Such a system works well when the group is largely homogenous in their philosophy/world view; when the decisions of government are only fine points of doctrine, this system, of majority rule, can work. When the populace is largely agreed upon their worldview, and the populace is largely trying to find the truest way of administering justice, establish boundaries of behavior, the minority will watch the actual experiment, and observe its results. If the experiment produces poor fruit, the majority will lose their enthusiasm for that theory, and the minority will be given the emotional/political space to offer/lobby/electioneer for an alternate solution.
But, when the average behavior of the individual is animalistic, the scenario described by John will be reasonably accurate. Each of the band of animals, each seeking their own way (seeking to expand their own property and liberty at the expense of others), will use the government as a tool of domination.
The scenario, the domination of one animalistic party by another, will only change when men’s hearts are changed; this scenario will only become one of cooperation, voluntary submission to the will of another for a season when men’s hearts are changed. This may be a miraculous change of heart, or it may be the studied and reasoned decision to adopt the Biblical paradigm of brotherly love. Either way, there is a change of heart. I believe the two work well together and are in general the formula for the transformation of men’s hearts.
As such, the Christian Constitutional Republic can be such an amalgamation of people that submit alternatively to the doctrinal interpretation of life. But, when the society is based upon self, money, power, lust, status… as the motivators for group policy, the government reflects the passion of its people, and the government-as-enforcer for the will of the majority becomes onerous. We currently live in a national regime that largely reflects this animalistic bias, with government breeding dependents, and giving favored status to “victimized” minorities, to win the votes required to have the appearance of legitimacy.
Whether the communalists/collectivists/socialists acknowledge this as their strategy or not, is immaterial; they may actually love poor, discriminated, downtrodden minorities, and feel that utopia can only come when the wealthy are stripped of all their riches, and the poor are given the fruits of the labor of others to bring them out of their squalor. Regardless, the effect is government taxing one group, and redistributing that wealth to buy the votes of another.
And, this manifestation of government will be the norm, until the hearts of men change, to love truth and love their fellow man. I recommend the heart changing commitment to Jesus as Lord as the first step, and then a lifetime of study of the Biblical scriptures, and joining into a fellowship of believers to be accountable for thought, word, and action as compared to the Biblical standard.