I Hate it When That Happens....

I hate when I make people mad or annoyed. Especially when I do it by accident, such as when my meaning is not clearly understood in a blog entry. (Or sometimes when it IS clearly understood.) When that happens, I go back and read and re-read my blog to see if I made a mistake or if I seem to be saying something that I didn't mean to say. If so, I will apologize, write a retraction, or try to make it right however I can. If after all the re-reading, I still can't figure out why someone reacted the way they did, it really bothers me.

This happened with my previous blog entry about "Tax Day". Someone whom I really respect wrote and seemed very upset, thinking that I had called anyone who pays taxes a "perverted uncivilized cretin". I still don't believe that is what I said. I think that anyone who imposes, enforces, collects, or lives off of taxes fits that description, but not people who feel they are forced to pay taxes. They are the victims of armed governmental extortion.

I guess I need to clarify. What I was meaning was that in a free world, there would be no coercive taxation. If a government is allowed to exist, its financing would have to be strictly voluntary. Anyone who chose to try to set up and finance a government under those circumstances would be evil, and anyone who voluntarily chose to give money to help fund the effort would be evil as well. Obviously this is not the world we currently live in, but is instead a fanciful, fairytale world.

I believe that true civilized life is only possible in the absence of governmental coercion and oppression. Therefore people who would wish to reimpose government on the rest of humanity would be working towards a less civilized condition and would be "uncivilized" in my estimation. Anyone who feels that they own another person is acting against nature and is therefore "perverted" by definition. Government is the way those who feel that they own the rest of us join together to enforce their views.

As I hope you can see, it is those who make the evil choice to steal and control that I have the disagreement with; not those who are forced to live under the corrupt regimes that exist in most of the world. I would be calling myself a "perverted uncivilized cretin" were that the case.