Correct, and this is precisely why I usually vote for the democrats: the party of fiscal and social responsibility.

As opposed to the Republicans, who would allow every bridge in the nation to collapse if it meant bigger tax breaks to their pals when they buy their Hummers.

Z,

If I understood what you were asking, I would answer it. But those damn conservative trolls annoy me too. That dawgoned Jay and SaveFarris. Power to the people!

You mean my military retirement check? No – not today. But yes I get one. And it doesn’t affect my point – which you would understand if you possessed even rudimentary reading comprehension. The fact that taxes are compulsory should lead us to understand the issue of modern governance is nor merely deciding if a program is good, but how will we pay for it and is it worth seizing more money from working men and women. There are two sides to the equation. Perspective!

Then how come the only people here that place an arbitrary standard on the definition of “religion” are the conservative trolls?

Speaking of government program benefits Dugger, did your government military pension check arrive today, on time? The one that was funded with money taken from us at gunpoint?

Hohoho, there most certainly is, big boy. Up there in dugger’s compound.
It’s kind of funny how he hates the government but loves him some Bush (heh).

Funny and sad.

All true.

The rest is muddled. Said neither thievery or evil. In fact, I (we) said enforcement powers are required by the government. The point remains that the pious condemnations (He hates the CHILDREN!”) of Bush or whoever suggests not fully funding a program is a crock. There are two opposing dynamics involved and both wind up causing pain. And to dwell only on the pain of those not getting a government program benefit as opposed to those who either have to work harder or reduce their standard of living to pay for that program, is wrong.

You can choose to phrase it in the language of theivery all you care to (and ignore that you yourself are complicit in this “crime” against yourself) but the harshest thing you can actually say is that “The people take the people’s money and spend it on the people in such a way that the people have decided to.” Which, I gotta tell you, doesn’t sound quite as outright evil as you’re making it sound. But hey, you dont like it? You can get the hell out. Whatta Country, eh?

Well, you got the ‘genius’ portion right. Everything else is wrong. We fully recognize that the government has to have enforcement powers to function. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t power and that it, taxation, isn’t the forcible seizure of citizen sweat equity. That power ultimately is based on the application of physical force. I don’t have to have a credit card, even if every neighbor in my subdivision has one or in my state. But no matter how I voted, I have to pay taxes and obey the government. They aren’t elective. So when we talk about government funding some program somebody thinks is worthwhile, lets be sure we consider that the ‘good’ of that program is balanced against the ‘bad’ – that we are, by force, going make American tax payers pay for itout of their hides. If you acknowledge that, then suddenly you understand that those out there constantly harping on the morality of funding some program or another are full of crap if they don’t also address the morality of seizing money from citizens to pay for it.

I know you geniuses wish that there there were an adversarial relationship between “us” and the “government”, but there simply ain’t. “Us” are the “government”.

See, that’s what all that stuff they tried to teach you in grade school was all about – that Boston Tea Party thingy and the American Revolution. It wasn’t taxes per se the colonists objected to. It was taxation without representation

Now if you think taxes are too high, or too low, or that they’re spent on the wrong things (as I do, for instance, in the case of the Iraq fiasco). You are free to say so and to attempt to persuade your fellow citizens to agree. But taxes = stealing? Only if you’re a blinkered, solipsistic wingnut.

Oh, wait….

Now back to Jesus: Where he lived taxes were imposed arbitrarily by an adversarial authoritarian government, collected by notoriously corrupt contractors and spent on things that the taxpayers had no say in determining. See over here, that’s an apple. Over there? that’s a hand grenade.