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To: sourcery
You absolutely have choices, you're too lazy to stand by your beliefs.

You could walk on the side of highways, you could ride horses so that you don't pay gasoline taxes, you could climb stairs in tall building to protest the government fees on elevators, you could grow you own food to protest government meddling in food production, you could make your own clothes to avoid paying retail taxes, you could shut off your computer and leave the internet to avoid the taxes involved.

You have choices you can take, or you could bitch for the sake of bitching.
467 posted on 02/02/2003 8:55:46 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez (The Ever So Humble Banana Republican)
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To: Luis Gonzalez
You absolutely have choices, you're too lazy to stand by your beliefs.

You could walk on the side of highways, you could ride horses so that you don't pay gasoline taxes, you could climb stairs in tall building to protest the government fees on elevators, you could grow you own food to protest government meddling in food production, you could make your own clothes to avoid paying retail taxes, you could shut off your computer and leave the internet to avoid the taxes involved.

You have choices you can take, or you could bitch for the sake of bitching.

Even were I to do all the things you suggest, it would still be possible to validly accuse me of benefitting from taxation. Two trivial examples: national defense and police service (which at least theoretically reduces the crime rate, even if the police won't come when I call on them myself).

But the whole issue is non-sequitur. I am under no moral obligation whatsoever to avoid benefitting from theft by others. I am only required to refrain from performing my own acts of theft. There is no moral requirement to come to the aid of others, regardless of how wrongfully someone else may be treating them. Nor is there any moral obligation to right the wrongs committed by others. Such obligation rests entirely with those who do wrong, and with no one else.

I am no one's slave. I may choose to aid others, and to defend their rights, but only because I recognize that such action is in my self interest (which is generally the case). Failing to speak up for and defend the rights of others may be unwise, but it is not morally wrong.

If I actually thought that abstaining as much as possible from society so as to avoid benefitting from taxation (and all the other misdeeds that occur in the world) were the optimal way to fight against the evil of collectivism, I would do so. But I do not perceive that to be the case. I think anyone who took such a course would largely be ignored, and achieve nothing of consequence whatsoever.

475 posted on 02/02/2003 10:18:50 PM PST by sourcery
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