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Thread: Libertarianism/Anarchism - Page 36







Post#876 at 08-19-2009 04:07 PM by haymarket martyr [at joined Sep 2008 #posts 2,547]
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from Justin

Meaningful dialogue with your personae is impossible, and I've always been a big believer in forewarning when possible.
I am sure the rest of the Pink Ladies thank you for your leadership skills in saving them. Its hard to fault you for trying to hold onto your flock.... or at least pretending to have one.







Post#877 at 08-19-2009 04:24 PM by Kurt Horner [at joined Oct 2001 #posts 1,656]
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Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
Please forgive me if i am missing the obvious here but I do not remember taking any position of employment. To what position that I took are you referring? Before we go any further, I would appreciate it you could clear that up because I certainly do not want to be put in the position of having to defend something I never advocated in the first place.
I did make the assumption that like most liberals you consider it appropriate for an employee to object to abuse by means other than quitting. Is this incorrect?

Scenario: A worker dislikes an internal policy set by management. He objects. The policy is sustained over his objections. He continues to object to the policy, complies with it to the absolute minimum extent necessary and encourages other workers to object as well. Do you believe this is freeloading? Anti-social? Is the worker's only appropriate response to find other employment?

I assume, correct me if I'm wrong, that the answer to these questions is no. If so, then why are libertarians, in your opinion, required to shut up or leave the country? The situation is exactly analogous.

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
Regarding any hypocrisy and my C.O. situation..... the American government fully and completely recognizes a person doing CO service as part of any citizens obligation to its government and to the society it represents. I fulfilled my governmental obligation to the satisfaction of the government and the law it recognizes.
So, how do you feel about outright draft evasion? (I.e. no C.O. service, just flat out refusing to go.)


Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
and this was asked regarding the mention of 'freeloading'.... "is anyone advocating this?"

Quote Originally Posted by Matt1989 View Post
I'm puzzled as to why you think coercion is less damaging to a flourishing society than freeloading.
Or am I jumping to the wrong conclusion from those words?
Yes, you are.

Matt was conceding that a social order without coercion may involve some freeloaders. He was not stating that he would be one of them, nor that he advocates such.

What he was saying, as far as I can tell, is that the damage done from some amount of freeloading probably doesn't even come close to matching the harm done by coercion. So, thus, why choose a coercive system?







Post#878 at 08-19-2009 04:43 PM by wtrg8 [at NoVA joined Dec 2008 #posts 1,262]
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Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
This may be what the law says, but I was discussing what social contract theory implies. The concept of obligations of citizenship is incompatible with that theory of the state's legitimacy. In practice, actual states do not act as if they are in a contract with their citizens -- they act as masters.
Simply contract theory, Do it or go to jail unless its recognized by the state that satisfies its requirements. Now you understand why Libertarians pay their taxes but disagree with the ways the state is dispensing our money.

Damn, I find myself agreeing with HM.







Post#879 at 08-19-2009 04:49 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
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Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
Matt - thank you for clarifying your position on the Libertarian party and your feelings toward it. I can respect that you do not include yourself in that effort. I do feel that when you have an official political party that is represented on the ballot in the different states, and they have the name Libertarian Party and they advocate a whole raft of positions commonly identified as libertarian in nature and in fact, that the vote for that party is indeed a significant indicator of the support in the general public for libertarianism.
It's a baseline. There are a lot of people who are libertarian but don't vote Libertarian:

1) Agorists, Voluntaryists, and other groups who have strategic and/or moral objections to voting.
2) Social Anarchists
3) "Realists" whose sympathies are with the LP but recognize their dismal chance of success, and so vote Dem or Repub.
4) Libertarians unhappy with the LP's positions, message, or the candidates they have nominated.
5) People who don't vote due to inability, laziness, or the fact that they have better things to do.
6) People whose instincts are anti-authoritarian but are only partially sold on libertarian theory, and choose not to vote LP.

And so on. I think the people in these ranks combined dwarfs the number of actual Libertarian Party voters.

I can understand how anyone would not want to be identified to a political organization whose "success" is as dismal as that of the Libertarian Party, not just based on one election, but year after year after year.
Well, that's just a small part of it for me. ATM, I fall into groups 1, 4, and 5.

As a member of society who willingly resides here, I accept that I am not the King. I accept the fact that there has been long established a system of political representation and the passing of laws and instituting government sponsored action. I accept that my opinion on any of this will not always emerge as the dominant one or the one that is victorious and enacted.

I also accept what you have several times termed as coercion. I accept that the same way I accept the loss of blood during surgery ot the way I accept getting those annoying little remnants in my teeth after i eat a great ear of summer corn. It just the way it is in this world. No more - no less.... its just reality. One can go down to the ocean shoreline and plant their feet as firmly as they can into the sand and attempt to hold back the tides from coming in. It does not work. It is simply the way things work. Coercion is part of all governments. Its that simple.
Indeed. Which is, inter alia, why I'm an anarchist.

But we're not just talking about the tendencies of some government, we're talking about the reality of the U.S. government. And it pains me greatly to see good people forced to surrender their property so that it may be used toward the slaughter of innocents in faraway nations. That's something I can never accept.







Post#880 at 08-19-2009 05:50 PM by jamesdglick [at Clarksville, TN joined Mar 2007 #posts 2,007]
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Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
...Obviously on that issue, HM took the proper response -- which is that there are no obligations of citizenship...
-From Haymarket's POV, he took a hypocriticial response, even as he accuses others of hypocrisy.

I'm not arguing that fraudulent draft-dodging is wrong based on my standards, or your standards, or on Justin's standards, but on Haymarket'sstandards, since he claims that one should obey the popular will as decided by our legally elected politicians:

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...I feel it is hypocritical for someone... [to] live in a society of their choice and of their own free will knowing full well the obligations of citizenship one has in that society... then attempt to subvert the will of the vast majority of people ...
...and who claims to be a proponent of "selflessness":

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
[HM Deriding Objectivism] A so called philosophy based on selfishness. What a concept!!!!!
...ignoring the fact that Uncle Sam didn't say, "We'll, golly, we're not gettin' Haymarket, so we'll just take one less this month"; no, someone else had to go in Haymarket's suddenly selfish place.

...so much for "obeying the will of the vast majority", and so much for "selflessness".

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...Regarding any hypocrisy and my C.O. situation..... the American government fully and completely recognizes a person doing CO service as part of any citizens obligation to its government and to the society it represents...
-Legally correct: My paternal grandfather (an Amishman) spent most of WWII in lumber camps in the NW...

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...I fulfilled my governmental obligation to the satisfaction of the government...
-Uh, under false pretenses:

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
To put the period at the end of todays sentence, I would call an air strike tonight on the ten or twenty biggest pirate mansions in Somalia.

Make sure they get the message.
...this was after Mr. "Conscientious Objector" joined in on cheering the deaths of three pirates by SEAL snipers. Rani (yes, Rani) actually showed more sympathy for the deceased.

CO my ass.

Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
...In this case, the unreasonable demand was to risk his life attempting to kill people who posed no threat to him...
1) FWIW, most men drafted in 1971 did not end up in SE Asia, although some did end up in Korea, which was also a shooting war;

2) If we used the Immediate Direct Threat standard, we probably wouldn't have had a draft even in WWII; the only wars which would have passed the test would have been AWI, the War of 1812, ACW (maybe), and every single Indian War.

And again, using Haymarket's standards (not yours or mine), the individual isn't the one who gets to pick and choose:

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
... we do not allow anyone to volunteer which taxes they decide to elect to pay out of the goodness of their hearts and which taxes they opt to not pay out of any other reason they may have. That is not the way the tax system works...
Anyway:

Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
... in the grand scheme of things a tax hike is far less of an imposition than being drafted. It may be a difference of degree only, but there's a lot of degree there!
-FALSE:

[Taken from Post #1045 of the now-defunct "4T & Anything Military" thread]
-Consider:

A single guy with no dependents earning [an average of] $50,000/year currently loses 16% of his working life* to the US government, due to the Income Tax.

If we accepted Pink Splice's insane** recommendation for a six-year Draft By Powerball, our hero would lose 100% of his working life for a period of six years, which comes out to only 13% of his working life*.

Let's imagine that we scrapped the peacetime Income Tax, and substituted six-years of peacetime Universal Military Service as PS or M&L might propose... Over the course of his working lifetime*, our hero (Hero or Artist?) would actually be freer of Uncle Sam with conscription than he currently is with the income tax.

*22-67 years of age.

**As far as I can figure, no American has EVER been forced to serve for a total of six years (if you know of an exception, let me know). Few Americans have had to serve five. [End Quote]

Back to Haymarket':

I'd still love to know: Who paid Haymarket's Military Service Tax? Come on, I know you're retired, Haymarket. I'd think it'd be easy to go check out the old county draft records from 1971. You can look the guy up, and thank him for his inconvenience...

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Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
WARNING: The poster known as jamesdglick has a history of engaging in fraud. He makes things up out of his own head and attempts to use these blatant lies to score points in his arguments. When you call him on it, he will only lie further. He has such a reputation for doing this that many people here are cowed into silence and will not acknowledge it or confront him on it.

Anyone who attempts to engage with glick will discover this and find out you have wasted your time and energy on an intellectual fraud of the worst sort.
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.







Post#881 at 08-19-2009 06:38 PM by Kurt Horner [at joined Oct 2001 #posts 1,656]
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Quote Originally Posted by jamesdglick View Post
I'm not arguing that fraudulent draft-dodging is wrong based on my standards, or your standards, or on Justin's standards, but on Haymarket'sstandards, since he claims that one should obey the popular will as decided by our legally elected politicians:
It's not clear that HM actually holds that sort of rigid obedience to the state. I'll let him clarify though.

Quote Originally Posted by jamesdglick View Post
-FALSE:

-Consider:

A single guy with no dependents earning [an average of] $50,000/year currently loses 16% of his working life* to the US government, due to the Income Tax.

If we accepted Pink Splice's insane** recommendation for a six-year Draft By Powerball, our hero would lose 100% of his working life for a period of six years, which comes out to only 13% of his working life*.
Oh, come on, I'm sure you can come up with other problems with the draft beyond lost wages! Like perhaps lost limbs? Or, having to kill other human beings? You can't really quantify the evils of being enslaved.

Given a choice between losing a percentage of my wages or losing my freedom utterly for an extended period, I'll take the taxes any day. This is especially true when, due to combat, that extended period might be the remainder of my life. The draft is without question more oppressive than taxation.







Post#882 at 08-19-2009 08:22 PM by Child of Socrates [at Cybrarian from America's Dairyland, 1961 cohort joined Sep 2001 #posts 14,092]
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Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
Given a choice between losing a percentage of my wages or losing my freedom utterly for an extended period, I'll take the taxes any day. This is especially true when, due to combat, that extended period might be the remainder of my life. The draft is without question more oppressive than taxation.
I'm with Kurt. Money is replaceable; your own body parts aren't.







Post#883 at 08-19-2009 09:48 PM by Mikebert [at Kalamazoo MI joined Jul 2001 #posts 4,502]
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Quote Originally Posted by Matt1989 View Post
But the 'taxation is theft' line is really just a few very plausible premises:

1) People are the sole rightful* owners of their property.
2) Any entity that uses coercion to take rightfully-owned property from someone commits an act of theft.
3) Government is such an entity (through the process of taxation).
4) Taxation is theft.

*By rightful I mean they went through the proper procedure to establish the best claim to their property.
This is nonsense. Your asterisk comment invalidates the whole argument.

People are *not* the sole rightful owners of their property. How do you establish ownership? With a deed? And does this deed give you sovereignty? No. If you kill someone on your own property you can be arrested, charged and convicted of murder. The same is true of other local, state or national law. They all apply to you even when on your property. And that includes taxes. When you buy the property with this deed attached you agree to these limitations. Nobody forces you to buy property or live in a particular governmental jurisdiction.

And if you object to the deed, then how do you establish your claim to your land? Obviously, it must have belonged to native Americans in the past. How did it come to you from them? We know historically that most of the Indian lands were taken from them by force.







Post#884 at 08-19-2009 09:52 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
Can you give an actual historical example of a natural monopoly? I'm at a loss to find any. There are certainly many industries where a natural monopoly was claimed in order so that state monopoly would be granted, but actual examples of natural monopoly are thin on the ground.

Is health care a natural monopoly? Clearly not, since the steady consolidation of this industry has followed the increase in state involvement in the industry. As I've argued before in this thread, the state is the primary (and perhaps the sole) agent driving centralization of industry. The current "reform" legislation shows that process quite plainly -- reforms are typically driven by the industry being regulated, and for their benefit.

Competition has been steadily "reformed" out of the health care industry, since that makes it easier for the industry to extract profits from us.
Generally, things involving the kinds of things we call "utilities" are natural monopolies for the simple reason that having separate parallel sets of infrastructure is stupid and wasteful. I don't think healthcare is a natural monopoly. I don't want a nationalized health system (as in the UK), I want a national "single payer: insurance system as in Canada so people on limited incomes are not bankrupted by medical bills either because they cannot afford private insurance, or because their insurance is uselessly minimal because it's all they can afford, and this is bad for everyone in the long run because then people on low incomes are not getting preventive treatment they need simply because they cannot afford it, causing health problems get worse and worse until they end up in the emergency room with a bill that bankrupts them.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#885 at 08-19-2009 09:56 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by fruitcake View Post
BTW folks Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia also had an exit tax.
The Nazis made nice highways to, OMG, that means the Insterstate Highway system is FASCIST!!!
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#886 at 08-19-2009 09:59 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by wtrg8 View Post
When each of us were born or hatched, the States provided a birth certificate for us. In order to get a SSN, our parents or sponsor, had to turn over our birth certificate to the Federal Government for Debt by the Federal Reserve System. To use the analogy, we are slaves to our Government. So we have to pay the exit tax or death tax to settle debts under our names by the Government. This is why many millionaires are opting out and to become Free Citizens.
There is no "death tax", there is a estate tax that is supposed to prevent the development of a monied aristocracy that is incompatible with Democracy and Meritocracy.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#887 at 08-19-2009 10:13 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by Matt1989 View Post
Indeed. Which is, inter alia, why I'm an anarchist.
This seems to be why we differ. I am not against government and the state in and of itself, I am against unrestrained and unaccountable state power.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#888 at 08-19-2009 10:20 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by Mikebert View Post
This is nonsense. Your asterisk comment invalidates the whole argument.

People are *not* the sole rightful owners of their property. How do you establish ownership? With a deed? And does this deed give you sovereignty? No. If you kill someone on your own property you can be arrested, charged and convicted of murder. The same is true of other local, state or national law. They all apply to you even when on your property. And that includes taxes. When you buy the property with this deed attached you agree to these limitations. Nobody forces you to buy property or live in a particular governmental jurisdiction.

And if you object to the deed, then how do you establish your claim to your land? Obviously, it must have belonged to native Americans in the past. How did it come to you from them? We know historically that most of the Indian lands were taken from them by force.
A similar sentiment to this is found among many Left-Libertarian types. Private Property (as opposed to personal possessions, which are misleadingly confused with property by Right-Libertarians and Neo-Liberals) only exists because society enforces it's existance.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#889 at 08-19-2009 10:33 PM by Justin '77 [at Meh. joined Sep 2001 #posts 12,182]
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Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
The Nazis made nice highways too...
To be perfectly honest, their highways may have been top-notch back in the day, but they suck now. The best highways in Europe these days are the Scandanavian ones...
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch

"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy

"[it]
is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky







Post#890 at 08-19-2009 11:01 PM by haymarket martyr [at joined Sep 2008 #posts 2,547]
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Let me weigh this for a moment. On one side we have the United States Government, its laws, the Selective Service System, and its duly constituted Draft Boards who accept my classification as a CO and my service as assigned by my draft board as meeting my legal obligation to my nation and its people. On the other side we have some embittered military nut who believes that his radically different opinion matters more. I am tempted to say that the opinion of Glick on my fulfilling my service obligation is a pile of manure. However, in hindsight and after taking a moment, that would be a gross and unfair insult to the manure.







Post#891 at 08-19-2009 11:05 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
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Quote Originally Posted by Mikebert View Post
This is nonsense. Your asterisk comment invalidates the whole argument.

People are *not* the sole rightful owners of their property. How do you establish ownership? With a deed? And does this deed give you sovereignty? No. If you kill someone on your own property you can be arrested, charged and convicted of murder. The same is true of other local, state or national law. They all apply to you even when on your property. And that includes taxes. When you buy the property with this deed attached you agree to these limitations. Nobody forces you to buy property or live in a particular governmental jurisdiction.

And if you object to the deed, then how do you establish your claim to your land? Obviously, it must have belonged to native Americans in the past. How did it come to you from them? We know historically that most of the Indian lands were taken from them by force.
Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
A similar sentiment to this is found among many Left-Libertarian types. Private Property (as opposed to personal possessions, which are misleadingly confused with property by Right-Libertarians and Neo-Liberals) only exists because society enforces it's existance.
Well, as a former and current left-lib type, I used to have that sentiment. (Actually, my sentiment could have been more accurately stated that the proper standards regarding private property cannot be established a priori. But then I recognized the error.) Err, okay, I wouldn't have confused absolute property rights with the right to murder someone on your property. Inalienability, you know?







Post#892 at 08-20-2009 07:12 AM by haymarket martyr [at joined Sep 2008 #posts 2,547]
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from Kurt Horner

Can you clarify your position on employment then? Are you saying that the only appropriate response to poor working conditions is to find a new job? That would be a surprising position for someone with the moniker "haymarket martyr"!

Or, are you saying that I'm mischaracterizing your argument as "love it or leave it?"
Several things here...... first, I am not urging all persons with libertarian leanings to "love it or leave it" regarding living in the USA. This would be a final measure that would be urged on persons who seem borderline obsessed with the idea that they possess an ideology which dominates their thinking and their lives and has no real way of coming to fruition in the nation they live in. America is not an anarcho-libertarian nation and there is no large movement to make it so. On the net and in real life I have seen folks like this and it is akin to watching an Eskimo attempt to live comfortably in an equatorial jungle by adopting a completely foreign way of life. It is not very fulfilling for the Eskimo and is certainly is not fun for everybody else who has to listen to the constant complaining about the heat.

As to my feelings about employment, I would urge the same action to anyone who hated their job, was almost always angry about it, was constantly coming up empty in their attempt to change the job conditions and was generally unhappy and making those around them unhappy.

I hope that answers your questions.
Last edited by haymarket martyr; 08-20-2009 at 08:35 AM.







Post#893 at 08-20-2009 02:58 PM by jamesdglick [at Clarksville, TN joined Mar 2007 #posts 2,007]
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Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
It's not clear that HM actually holds that sort of rigid obedience to the state. I'll let him clarify though...
-Let Haymarket' clarify this:

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
[To Justin, IIRC] This whole BS about freedom and liberty and whatever term is in vogue today ... got news for you my friend, there is not such thing as unlimited, unrestricted freedom or liberty. It does not exist. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you stop putting up phony measuring points in your arguements, the sooner you can be on the path towards peace in your life.
...and this:

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
... we do not allow anyone to volunteer which taxes they decide to elect to pay out of the goodness of their hearts and which taxes they opt to not pay out of any other reason they may have. That is not the way the tax system works...
...doesn't sound too free-wheeling to me.

...back to Mr. Horner:

Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
Oh, come on, I'm sure you can come up with other problems with the draft beyond lost wages! Like perhaps lost limbs...This is especially true when, due to combat, that extended period might be the remainder of my life...
-You mean, that you don't consider military service to be a "sinecure"?

Golly, do you realize that farmers can lose their limbs, too?

Aren't you aware that becoming a roofer is more likely to get you killed than the average person who serves in the military (not adjusted for age)?

Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
...Or, having to kill other human beings...

-Leaving off the sarcasm, Conscientious Objectors can serve in the military (usually the medical field) without bearing arms. Here's two unusual examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_W._Bennett_(conscientious_objector)

Quote Originally Posted by Child of Socrates View Post
I'm with Kurt. Money is replaceable; your own body parts aren't.
-Really? The government gives you back your withheld wages at the end of the year? And my comment about farmers also holds true.

Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
...You can't really quantify the evils of being enslaved... Given a choice between losing a percentage of my wages or losing my freedom utterly for an extended period, I'll take the taxes any day...
-It sounds like you'd rather be partly enslaved for your entire life, rather than fully enslaved for a brief period of your life iot get it over with. To each his own.

One other thing: Keep in mind that the 16% figure for income taxes is compared to the 13% figure for six years of military service; to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been drafted for that long in all of American history; adjust accordingly.

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
On one side we have the United States Government, its laws, the Selective Service System, and its duly constituted Draft Boards who accept my classification as a CO and my service as assigned by my draft board as meeting my legal obligation to my nation and its people...
-Only because you lied:

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
To put the period at the end of todays sentence, I would call an air strike tonight on the ten or twenty biggest pirate mansions in Somalia.

Make sure they get the message.
...doesn't sound like the attitude of a sincere CO to me...

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...On the other side we have some embittered military nut...
-"Military Nut"

Oh, no, you haven't betrayed anything there...

...as for "embittered", the word which Haymarket is struggling for is "disgusted"...

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...who believes that his radically different opinion matters more...
-My "radically different opinion" is based on the fact that your unguarded postings give me better insight to your genuine attitudes than your draft board had access to back in 1971, you fraudulent jerk.

Back to Haymarket':

I'd still love to know: Who paid Haymarket's Military Service Tax? Come on, I know you're retired, Haymarket. I'd think it'd be easy to go check out the old county draft records from 1971. You can look the guy up, and thank him for his inconvenience...

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Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
WARNING: The poster known as jamesdglick has a history of engaging in fraud. He makes things up out of his own head and attempts to use these blatant lies to score points in his arguments. When you call him on it, he will only lie further. He has such a reputation for doing this that many people here are cowed into silence and will not acknowledge it or confront him on it.

Anyone who attempts to engage with glick will discover this and find out you have wasted your time and energy on an intellectual fraud of the worst sort.
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.







Post#894 at 08-20-2009 03:31 PM by haymarket martyr [at joined Sep 2008 #posts 2,547]
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08-20-2009, 03:31 PM #894
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The deluded mind is secure in its insanity believing it to be normal.

There no such thing as a "military service tax". The US government does not recognize any such concept and those are the laws we function under.....unless you are offering yourself as some sort of law unto yourself.

Glick -- either substantiate that there is or please quite harassing me. I fulfilled my obligation to the US government and met the law in that regard. Advocating the destruction of a building does not have anything to do with getting a CO deferment in a specific war. You dare to substitute your ignorance for the educated and trained knowledge and expertise of my local draft board??!?! Amazing. At my CO hearing I was never asked any questions about building destruction..... as if it mattered. They asked me what they wanted to ask me and I gave them honest answers.... including "I don't know the answer to that" if I did not. My local draft board gave me the CO deferrment but for you that is not good enough. You who have never met me, never participated in the process and who know next to nothing other than what is spoonfed to you and then distorted and twisted by you for your own purposes. The conceit ofthe ignorant knows no bounds..... nor shame it would seem.

Quit harassing me Glick.
Last edited by haymarket martyr; 08-20-2009 at 03:35 PM.







Post#895 at 08-20-2009 04:08 PM by jamesdglick [at Clarksville, TN joined Mar 2007 #posts 2,007]
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08-20-2009, 04:08 PM #895
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Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...There no such thing as a "military service tax". The US government does not recognize any such concept and those are the laws we function under.....unless you are offering yourself as some sort of law unto yourself...
-Look up the definition of "militia"; it's every able-bodied male 18-45; it's still on the books.

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...Advocating the destruction of a building does not have anything to do with getting a CO deferment in a specific war...
-Who do you think lives in those buildings:

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
I have no doubt that had I gone to Viet Nam and dropped napalm into the soft flesh of women and children...
...uh huh...

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...At my CO hearing I was never asked any questions about building destruction... as if it mattered...
-Did they ask you about killing people?

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
Well the Captain is free and with the American ship. Three of the four pirates are dead and the fourth is captured.

Fantastic news. Somebody really did this right for once.
...your sincere sorrow at the loss of life really chokes me up.

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...They asked me what they wanted to ask me and I gave them honest answers...
-Apparently, not.

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...Quit harassing me Glick.
1) How can I harass you? You have me on "Ignore" ();

2) How can I be harassing you? I even use the tag line which you wanted to use for me, hypocrite:


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Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
WARNING: The poster known as jamesdglick has a history of engaging in fraud. He makes things up out of his own head and attempts to use these blatant lies to score points in his arguments. When you call him on it, he will only lie further. He has such a reputation for doing this that many people here are cowed into silence and will not acknowledge it or confront him on it.

Anyone who attempts to engage with glick will discover this and find out you have wasted your time and energy on an intellectual fraud of the worst sort.
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.







Post#896 at 08-20-2009 04:20 PM by Kurt Horner [at joined Oct 2001 #posts 1,656]
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08-20-2009, 04:20 PM #896
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Quote Originally Posted by jamesdglick View Post
You mean, that you don't consider military service to be a "sinecure"?
We were speaking of draftees who a) have no choice in the matter and b) are considerably more likely to be put into combat than the average.

Quote Originally Posted by jamesdglick View Post
-It sounds like you'd rather be partly enslaved for your entire life, rather than fully enslaved for a brief period of your life iot get it over with. To each his own.
Get it over with? Veterans still pay taxes. They get some benefits but, odds are, they still experience a net loss even after serving. Your whole comparison is disingenuous. You should be comparing the drafted years to those same years in the private sector. In which case the taxes win hands down, even in monetary terms.







Post#897 at 08-20-2009 04:28 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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08-20-2009, 04:28 PM #897
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Taxes are enslavement?
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#898 at 08-20-2009 04:41 PM by jamesdglick [at Clarksville, TN joined Mar 2007 #posts 2,007]
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08-20-2009, 04:41 PM #898
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Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
We were speaking of draftees who a) have no choice in the matter and b) are considerably more likely to be put into combat than the average...
1) A "sinecure" is a "sinecure", whether you ask for it, or whether you luck into it ();

2) No, historically, volunteers do a disproportinate amount of the killing and dying in combat in every US war of which I'm aware.

Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
Get it over with? Veterans still pay taxes...
...and Income Tax Payers get drafted. So what?

I was comparing the onerousness of the two seperately, on their own terms, as if it were one or the other- go back and check my post.

Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Horner View Post
...In which case the taxes win hands down, even in monetary terms.
-Nope. Do the math.

Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
Taxes are enslavement?
-The government takes the fruits of someone's labor, whether they wish it or not, and uses it for some project, whether they approve of it or not.
Last edited by jamesdglick; 08-20-2009 at 04:44 PM.







Post#899 at 08-20-2009 05:03 PM by Brian Rush [at California joined Jul 2001 #posts 12,392]
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08-20-2009, 05:03 PM #899
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Quote Originally Posted by jamesdglick View Post
The government takes the fruits of someone's labor, whether they wish it or not, and uses it for some project, whether they approve of it or not.
There is a logical fallacy, whose name escapes me at the moment, that consists of taking two diverse things A and B, identifying some characteristic which the two have in common, falsely elevating that characteristic to be a defining quality of A, and arguing on this basis that B=A.

"Taking the fruits of someone's labor, whether they wish it or not," is not a defining characteristic of slavery. It is something that slavery has in common with paid work, the labor of raising children, required public service work done by doctors, and paying taxes. This shared characteristic does not make taxpayers into slaves any more than it makes employees, parents, or doctors into slaves.

When you can show that taxpayers lose all human rights and become the wholly-owned property of the state, without any hope of redress and subject to absolute rule in all particulars, including the power of life and death, torture and other punishment with no due process required, rape, and sale to another state, then get back to us.

As for Kurt Horner's comparison between taxpaying and conscription, how one would evaluate those two forms of involuntary public service probably depends in some measure on how strongly averse you are to killing people and/or putting your life at risk, which taxes never require you to do, at least not first-hand. As you say, to each his own, but I can completely understand his preference.

Now, I have a question for the anarchists on this thread (not the libertarians, since libertarians unlike anarchists would not abolish taxes). Reference has been made to other means of financing common-good activities. What other means did you have in mind? Also, what would you do if someone refused to cooperate with those means?
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

My blog: https://brianrushwriter.wordpress.com/

The Order Master (volume one of Refuge), a science fantasy. Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GZZWEAS
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Post#900 at 08-20-2009 05:08 PM by jamesdglick [at Clarksville, TN joined Mar 2007 #posts 2,007]
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08-20-2009, 05:08 PM #900
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Quote Originally Posted by Brian Rush View Post
...It is something that slavery has in common with paid work, the labor of raising children, required public service work done by doctors, and paying taxes...
-No, conventional paid work is a voluntary agreement between to entities, in our current set-up, raising children is voluntary, and required service work is a form of slavery, like the draft, the (rarely used) posse, or jury duty.

Quote Originally Posted by Brian Rush View Post
..."Taking the fruits of someone's labor, whether they wish it or not," is not a defining characteristic of slavery...
-Uh, it's pretty much the defining charachteristic, unless the master is just keeping you around as an ornament.
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