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"Jesus told us to give to the poor, not steal from others and give that to the poor."

Jesus also said to render unto Caesar. . .Christians are expected to pay taxes without having to be threatened with imprisonment, et al.

"I'm all for defending our country when it has been attacked."

Great, so pre-emption isn't your bad. I would remind you, however, that the God of the bible sent Israel into war a number of times pre-emptively.

So which are you - a clueless Christian or a clueless non-Christian? It must be one or the other since you've obviously missed some things in your study of scripture.

LOL

Even if Romans 13 is interpreted as a blanket obligation on subjects to pay their taxes, this makes no moral judgement on the subsequent use of said monies. If those taxes are taken from one class of citizens and given to another then it is theft just as if one citizen stole from another and gave it to his preferred recipient. Moreover, the Constitution (with respect to any welfare, medical, or social security schemes) has not changed since Madison (as President) said "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." Therefore those taxes are illegal and the first duty of the Christian is to obey the higest law of the land----which, in the United States, is the Constitution, not the arbitrary proclamations of our Washington rulers.

You can also be thankful to the founders that they didn't have the same interpretation of Romans 13 or we would be paying our taxes to Tony Blair right now.

I'm not quite sure what your definition of pre-emption is but I suspect that it's different than mine. My definition is the taking of offensive action to eliminate a possible threat. However this by definition includes every country or person on earth that is physically capable of attacking one, some, or all of the 50 United States or United States-owned territory.

We are not the nation of Israel (a.k.a. God's chosen people) and God is ostensibly not operating in the same manner following Jesus' fulfillment of God's covenant with the Israelites. I have not heard George Bush, or anyone else, claim that God has commanded the United States to Invade Iraq. That He commanded the Israelites to do so in the ancient past is of no consequence to us. Now that He is not giving us direct revelations such as that we must apply an unchanging, Biblical, and objective test to our considerations for use of military action.