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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (44928)	1/25/2006 6:12:25 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 90947

And the point this started from, and which you tried vainly to deny is just that: gov't is based on threat of force. All of them. Democratic, dictatorship, or whatever. The money that supports socialized medicine is not given volumtarily. It is taxed. That means if you don't give it to the gov't, it will come and take it- -by force if necessary. You argued that there was an agreement among citizens and their gov't regarding matters it would do. There is? I know I signed no such agreement. Does each Canadian as he is born or reaches majority do such? If that were the case, you might have an argument that gov't and taxation are voluntary, but it isn't and they're not. You seem to have a confusion between the "social contract" and a real contract. The social contract is an interesting and perhaps useful philosophical device, but we don't have a real contract with our government. We didn't make an agreement. We inherited our gov't and the requirement to pay taxes to support its activties whether we like them or not. We never voluntarily agreed to obey its laws, laws passed by a legislative body and that we never sign and whose existence we can be entirely unaware of. Many people have tried the trick of withholding a portion of taxes with the excuse that that money is used to pay for gov't activities they do not approve of and do not want done. (Military expenditures are the commonest for this.) The gov't's answer is "Tough! Give it to us or we will take it!" The gov't's courts (the only place you are allowed to go to get such matters decided) uniformly have upheld the gov't. And taking it back to where we started, if a legislature passes a law establishing gov't health care, I must pay taxes to support that or go to jail or try to fight off the revenuers with the knowledge that they are backed by the enormous deadly force a gov't can bring to bear if I actually start winning.