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Sunday, May 06, 2018

Americans need more Robin Hoods

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for April 4, 2018)




The middle of April is approaching fast; the time of the year when I hear a lot about taxes. Mention of taxes brings Robin Hood to my mind.

I don't think of him with the more recent spin which has been put on the legend, but in the original spirit of the tales.

Robin Hood is a model of an ethical outlaw. He broke bad laws by doing what was right for the right reasons. His story has been misrepresented, as in the original tellings he didn't "rob from the rich and give to the poor", but took back property which had been stolen through taxation and returned it to its rightful owners. Generally, those who collected the taxes were richer than their victims, but regardless, taxing is still wrong.

In later stories, Robin Hood was sometimes changed from a regular guy into displaced royalty in order to tickle the fancy of a government-obsessed public unhappy with the current government. This cheapened the story, changing him from a truly good guy doing right because it was right into a hypocrite who wanted to get rid of one gang of rulers so his faction could take their place. In this interpretation, his outlawry was only a means to a political end. That's much less inspiring.

I prefer the more uplifting tale.

"Taxation" is a dishonest word for theft committed under color of law. The punishments for failure to pay taxes add another level of malevolence to the act of taxing. You can't do right by doing wrong. If something is good and necessary, convince people to finance it voluntarily. If they won't, you need to let it go. Good ideas don't have to be imposed by force.

Contrary to Oliver Wendell Holmes' claim, taxation is not the price we pay for a civilized society, any more than cancer is the price we pay for a healthy life. Instead, civilized society is what we sometimes manage to create in spite of uncivilized antisocial acts such as taxation. Of course, you'd expect someone whose power, position, and wealth came from taxation to mislead you about its nature.

Robin Hood is a hero, completely unlike those who live off of taxation. Americans need more Robin Hoods; heroic outlaws standing on their behalf against socially acceptable wrongs. Perhaps a modern Robin Hood wouldn't stop at correcting taxation, but would also branch out to fight other authoritarian practices.

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Maybe cops aren't a disease



Cops are not the problem; cops are a symptom.

That doesn't mean it's OK to celebrate symptoms. They still need to be addressed (and eliminated*, ideally).

Often it's not the disease that kills you, it's the symptoms. That's even the case with something like Rabies. This is also true of statism.

It's already clear statism is a fatal disease, not so much because of the statism itself, but because of the symptoms. They are what kills. And cops, along with troops and other terrorists, are the most deadly symptom.

If not for people depraved enough to enforce The State against others, the disease of statism wouldn't be as likely to be fatal.

The symptoms need to be addressed.
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*If you believe killing them is the only way to eliminate cops, you seem to be saying cops can't reason their way out of evil, that they have no ethical principles worth anything, and nothing will stop people from continuing to show up and do the nasty, scummy "job" of policing.

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