[ExI] The Circle of Coercion

[Lee Corbin]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> So if I decided at age 18 that I don't want to obey the unjust
> taxation laws, for example, I could be expelled (to where?), but for
> those who accept citizenship taxation is part of the contract they
> have entered into?

As a practical matter, I think that I have
to agree with you. Pure libertarians, in
my view, constantly theorize about ideal
individuals, as if such really existed.

Our messy historical reality proves that
we must hold libertarianism only as a
direction toward which to move. What
would have happened to any classical
country of the 18th or 19th centuries
that had a uniform change of consciousness,
and whose residents all suddently became
libertarians?

This is not as far fetched as it sounds;
something quite similar happened to the
Polish nobility.

The answer is that they're quickly gobbled
up by outside gangs of one kind or another.
Sad as it is to admit it, the U.S. government
is merely the biggest and toughest gang
on the North American continent. The
vast federal armies made it perfectly
clear in 1865 what happens to anybody
that wants to go their own way.

Look at a globe. See any areas where
states haven't imposed, by force, their
wills?

Sadly, we have to work from within the
present system, helping here and there
to strengthen what is good, what is free,
provided we remain within what is culturally
possible.

And even more sadly, respect for basic
freedoms (and non-intrusion by governments,
either fiscally or by men with badges and
guns coming to make sure that you do what
they think is right medically regarding your
children), is culturally on the wane.

Who could even have (on this list) imagined
fifteen years ago that Voltaire's principle
would be questioned? Who sixty or seventy
years ago in America could have guessed that
government would come to absorb about fifty
percent of everyone's pay, and would soon
be trying to impose communist health care?

Lee