(urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)

[Daniel D Jones]

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 18:17:40 Pedro Pereira wrote:
> > Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 17:36:13 -0400
> > From: brunians at brunians.org
> > To: urth at lists.urth.net
> > Subject: Re: (urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
> >
> > I said this in a recent post. I will expand upon it.
> >
> > Taxation, the extortion of money from the citizens, is permissible for
> > things that are necessary. My list of necessary things includes the
> > military and things related to the military, infrastructure and certain
> > kinds of research. I insist that the involuntary nature of taxation be
> > explicit and resist the inevitable attempts at expansion of the
> > things-to-be-paid-for-by-taxation.
>
> I don't want to meddle to much on this discussion but your statements make
> me curious.
>
>
>
>
> "My list of necessary things includes the
>
> > military and things related to the military, infrastructure and certain
> > kinds of research."
>
> YOUR list. Basically you're OK with extortion of money from its citizens by
> the government AS LONG as it according to what YOU think is necessary. This
> means that everyone in this list, from what I gather, is OK with the
> extortion, the only thing that really changes is the degree of said
> extortion or, more realisticaly, as long as the money goes into what each
> one of us thinks it should go. This amounts to no real change in the nature
> of the political system itself whatsoever, just a change on the degree to
> each a state taxes and applies the money.

Not everyone, no.  I don't believe government is a privileged entity.  An act 
that is immoral for a citizen to perform doesn't become OK just because 
someone with a government title does it.  Government authority is derived from 
the authority of its citizens by proxy.  Government has only and solely the 
right to act in matters and ways which the citizens also have a right to act.

I believe that every man is his own and his only master.  I have the right to 
do anything I please, so long as I do no harm to you and yours.  If I do seek 
to do harm to you or yours, then you have the right to use force to stop me - 
to defend yourself.

Since you have the right to use force if necessary to, say, stop me from 
stealing your car, government can legitimately act as your proxy and institute 
a police force to stop auto theft.  This same principle can be expanded and 
extended to determine the legitimate authority that government possesses.  I 
have the right to defend myself from foreign invasion, so government can act 
as my proxy and institute a national defense.  (Note that this justifies 
national defense, not a national foreign policy enforcement arm.)  But I have 
no right to take your money by force in order to feed someone else, so 
government has no legitimate authority to do that either.