Feminist Mormon Housewives<\/a> that compulsory taxation for the purpose of giving it to other individuals in our society was antithesis to the gospel, the gospel of agency, which is to say, the ability to choose between good and evil. In return, it was brought to my attention that the actual point was not that Lucifer had proposed this plan, but that he wanted the glory. Yet God makes it very clear that Satan\u2019s greater sin was that he \u201csought to destroy the agency of man.\u201d<\/p>\nOur Creator\u2019s goal is to bring all of us home again\u2026with caveat: That we actually learn something.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s the sticky wicket. One cannot learn the principle of anything by compulsion. One doesn\u2019t learn generosity by having money taken from his paycheck arbitrarily and given to someone else, no matter how much the someone else needs it. The choice to be generous on our own, to provide for our weakest with that money, has been stripped from us.<\/p>\n
Obviously, libertarians wouldn\u2019t have a problem with some measure of taxation because things do need to be paid for: roads, bridges, fire, police, water treatment, a military. Oh, you know, those things that establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare<\/em>, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. There are better ways to collect those funds than via the IRS, but that\u2019s another six posts. However, I will not deny that they are vital to the successful running of a country and everyone needs to share in that cost.<\/p>\nOf course, I know what most of the first jumping off point of this post will be, because it\u2019s used (either disingenuously or ignorantly) as the first point of dissent in the debate: promoting the general welfare<\/em>, which has been used to justify enormous charitable<\/em> Congressional expenditures since the New Deal. So let\u2019s get that out of the way right now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nJames Madison put this succinctly enough in the third session of Congress in 1794, when an expedition of French refugees had arrived from the Haitian Revolution, and Congress sought $15,000 for their aid. This is the quote from the annals:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cMr. Madison wished to relieve the sufferers, but was afraid of establishing a dangerous precedent, which might hereafter be perverted to the countenance of purposes very different from those of charity. He acknowledged, for his own part, that he could not undertake to lay his finger on that article in the Federal Constitution which granted a right of Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Furthermore, Mr. Madison said, \u201cThe government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.<\/em>\u201d [Italics mine.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\nSo, yeah, one of the geniuses behind the Constitution didn\u2019t think it was such a good idea. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nWhew. Now, with that addressed, I\u2019ll conclude my original point:<\/p>\n
If we believe in a gospel of agency, then having our earnings taken from us to be given to someone else is denial of agency. Thus, the redistribution of wealth<\/em> via compulsory taxation is, by definition of our gospel, evil.<\/p>\nI shall now offer myself up for crucifixion. In fact, please do. I need the publicity.<\/p>\n
kthxbai<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the last week or so, it has become clear to me that the basic understanding quite a few people have of libertarianism is that of greed and selfishness. This surprises me because I thought most people had us figured for proponents of legalized marijuana and prostitution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,108,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money","category-politics","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17075,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/17075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}