It's every American's patriotic duty to pay as little tax as possible.
And: It does not follow that "It's every American's patriotic duty to pay as little tax as possible." leads to "nobody pays any federal tax.", or the implication in that statement which is, "the federal government gets no revenue."
That is correct. But nobody suggested that implication; are now arguing, quite correctly, against a straw man.
We are not talking about an implication. The situation "nobody pays any tax" is a special case of "little tax" to which you referred in your original claim. This is., moreover, the most illustrative special case: since zero is the smallest nonnegative number, the "zero tax" is the ultimate illustration of "little tax."
But, since you appear to have been derailed by this issue of zero tax, let me rephrase my question staying entirely within your "little tax:"
Smaller taxes translate into a smaller provision of public goods and, in particular, a weakening of our national defense. Surely you will agree that there is nothing patriotic about weakening America's defense.
The point is, of course, we should be, as were our Founders, very distrustful of the government. We conservatives have all the reasons to believe that the government at present is too big and has to be made smaller. But that does not excuse us from the duty to think and use logic.
If you hate big government --- fine, but hate it for the right reason. The reason your gave was not.
No, not “derailed” at all, just responding to what you actually wrote.