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Why is Government "Evil?" (page 2) | |
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Now let's examine some of the activities of government and judge them on the basis of our principles. War The purpose of war is twofold: to increase a government's tax base by controlling more land, and to grow its power base at home. During each and every war in history you can observe a tremendous growth of government. Budgets are inflated at a dizzying speed, war profiteers (such as the military-industrial complex) make their fortunes, and the average individual loses a great deal of money and freedom. Wartime activities are very similar to killing in cold blood. Warlords and generals strategize on the best ways to kill the enemy party. Soldiers and insurgents execute these strategies using deadly force. Sometimes they order around civilians, and sometimes (as the American troops have done in the War in Iraq) they slaughter civilians in order to inflict terror. It seems that the only difference between murder and war is scale: the most prolific serial killers kill hundreds, but wars kill millions. War as we know it cannot exist without government. Only a government can concentrate, by lies or force, all the consent, money and manpower necessary to wage war. If war is undesirable and evil, then government must be indicted as permitting this evil to exist. All this organizing of death-dealing energy and technique is not a natural but a very sophisticated process. Particularly in modern nations, but also all through the course of modern European history, it could never exist without the State. For it meets the demands of no other institution, it follows the desires of no religious, industrial, political group... The other classes, left to themselves, have too many necessities and interests and ambitions, to concern themselves with so expensive and destructive a game. Taxation It's no secret that most people don't like to pay taxes. Taxation is not voluntary. We do not choose to sanction the government and give them our money: they demand it from us based on where we live, and if we refuse to give it up, they use their own laws and guns against us. No other organization uses such strong-arm tactics, except perhaps the mafia. Let's look at the legal definition of extortion: The use, or the express or implicit threat of the use, of violence or other criminal means to cause harm to person, reputation, or property as a means to obtain property from someone else with his consent.If you refuse to pay your taxes, if you do not consent to the government's claim over you, then the government (more specifically, the IRS) may perform armed raids on your property, and will threaten you with harm to your property through politely-worded letters. Taxation, therefore, seems to fit the definition of extortion approved by the government itself. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: 'Your money, or your life.' And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.Advocates of taxation argue that your tax money goes to noble purposes and that you should be happy to surrender some of your income. In fact, more than half of income tax revenues go to military purposes [1]. Not only that, but it is a certainty that your tax money is funneled to purposes that you find morally repugnant. If you are a conservative, your taxes pay for abortions, gun control, welfare and other social programs, public schools, eminent domain seizures, and so on. If you are a liberal, your taxes pay for the military, the War on Drugs, corporate subsidies, religious subsidies, and so on. If you are a libertarian, anarchist, greenie, communist or other minority position, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you. Taxation is the means by which government centralizes resources to wage war, mounts overexpansive social programs, and finances its own growth. The argument that taxation is morally justified by its ends is fundamentally silly. If I go around with a gun telling people to surrender part of their income so I can use it to what I consider noble purposes, I would be considered a gangster and a criminal. Extortion is evil, and stealing is evil. Since government (however small) cannot exist without some form of taxation, government is evil. Go back, or Continue. |
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