Francisco Ferrer

What nonsense. Ayn Rand attended a Bolshevik-controlled university. Ergo, she was committing the stolen concept fallacy by using her study of philosophy and history there to criticize the Soviets? Since there are ways of maintaining law and order and providing for defense without resorting to armed robbery, there is nothing contradictory about living in America while demanding an end to the government's systematic assault on property rights. In fact, the contradiction would be to claim that a free society can be defended through the initiation of force. The principle of voluntary government financing rests on the following premises: that the government is not the owner of the citizens’ income and, therefore, cannot hold a blank check on that income—that the nature of the proper governmental services must be constitutionally defined and delimited, leaving the government no power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. “Government Financing in a Free Society” If you cannot confirm its authenticity you have no business using it. Changing? I have never said taxation with representation is legitimate. Neither did Ayn Rand. "The imposition of taxes does represent an initiation of force." This statement is true no matter what size, shape or color the government assumes. I am not morally permitted to threaten a man with a gun and grab the fruits of his labors. Nor is any other man, even if he has taken on the title "president," "governor," or "mayor." A nation, like any other group, is only a number of individuals and can have no rights other than the rights of its individual citizens. --Ayn Rand, "Collectivized Rights" If we "accepted America as it is," we would be accepting a government that has nationalized education, banking, transportation, communications, drugs and now healthcare. There is no reason why a rational, self-respecting individual should accept any part of that arrangement. By the way, the phrase, "Monsieur Sovereign Citizen" is just a cheap ad hominem. I challenge you to find any statement by Rand that the coerced financing of government as it existed in her lifetime was legitimate or that advocating voluntary financing should be postponed due to the "emergency" needs of her government. Considering that we have drifted even further away from capitalism the unknown ideal in the three decades since Rand's death, now more than ever is it time to oppose taxation, as it is being used to maintain, fortify and grow a vicious regime of Marxists, progressives and other enemies of a free society. In this fiction Rand says she'd be willing to go to jail to avoid paying taxes. And just what is the point of the spoof? To ridicule the idea that Rand engaged in tax resistance? No one on this forum has suggested any such thing. Add the strawman to your ad hominem. I never claimed that Rand was a law-breaking resister of taxation or of any other form of statism. What I have been discussing is her ideas and their implications for life under creeping dictatorship today. Rand's political philosophy does not make moral exceptions for government officials. On this she is perfectly clear: No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as 'the right to enslave.' ("Man's Rights") When the government does confiscate our property against our will, it may at present be foolhardy for the victim to forcibly resist it. But it is the responsibility of every advocate of a free society to identify taxation for what it is: an immoral, unjustified act of aggression by a gang of armed thugs against citizens made progressively weaker and weaker by prior aggressions. It is only adding insult to injury for a supposed defender of capitalism to claim that the income tax is some sort of self-chosen obligation or "donation." Nothing voluntary carries with it the threat of a prison term.

There is always an emergency. If the latest crisis du jour raised by nervous neocons and the perpetually frantic media were not the Ukraine, it would be Syria or Venezuela or the Sudan or North Korea or some other hellhole that needs immediate U.S. taxpayer money, and I mean right now, folks, because the worst bully since Hitler has just launched a campaign of world conquest and New York City is next and if you don't want your grandchildren growing up speaking Russian (or Arabic or Spanish or Korean) it's in your rational self-interest to depose the dictator and bring the oppressed of the world some freedom and laissez-faire capitalism just like we enjoy right here under Obama. Sorry, but the old sales pitch for world intervention just doesn't exhort us as it did when the last bully was on the world stage. If people really think what happened in the Ukraine is horrible, let them do something about it. There is no U.S. law that forbids a private citizen from traveling to that troubled region and volunteering his life, time and fortune to liberate the victims of naked aggression. Oh, I see, perhaps it's in one's rational self-interest to get some other sucker to risk everything he's got in the cause. Tell you what, you use your money to go round the globe to fight the Russians, and let me use mine to fight the socialists on our own shores.

This is not an answer. It is the equivalent of "You'll find a way, Mr. Rearden." New wars require more money. Ninety-nine per cent of all federal money ultimately is raised through various forms of robbery. New wars mean a bigger Big Brother and a weakened citizenry.

This is not an anarchism-minarchism issue. Anyone who has read "Government Financing in a Free Society" knows that Ayn Rand maintained that "the government of a free society may not initiate the use of physical force and may use force only in retaliation against those who initiate its use" and further that "the imposition of taxes does represent an initiation of force." Thus, in taking a stand not only against the increasing of taxes and inflation (which, along with other assaults on freedom, would follow inevitably from another foreign war), but against taxation itself, I am defending one of Objectivism's core political principles. If I am "tearing up the Constitution," then so was Ayn Rand, whose political philosophy would never have granted government the "power to lay and collect taxes.” Moreover, in treating the fight against the tax slavery imposed on me as more important than the campaign to rid the Ukraine of Russian oppression, I am practicing the Objectivist virtue of selfishness, specifically of regarding my own freedom as a more immediate and important concern than the freedom of those on the other side of the globe. I have no idea what this has do do with the topic at hand. Do you have a source for this quote? It sounds very much like an argument for the continued rule over the colonies by King George. No majority, not even one million to one, has the moral authority to deprive a human being of his rights. Rights are derived not from majority rule but from man's nature. And man's nature does not suddenly change on the whim of voters. The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. (Atlas Shrugged) Let's ask a related question: what kind of person would be willing to enjoy the freedoms of living in America without the concomitant willingness to fight for those freedoms? Should we therefore conclude that the draft is a morally legitimate way of raising an army? (If you're interested in how Ayn Rand would answer, read "The Roots of War.") The difference between enslaving a man full time (taking all of his labor) and enslaving him part time (seizing a portion of the products of his labor) is only one of degree. Nothing done under the threat of force, including payment of taxes, implies consent or agreement. Like 99% of us, Rand paid her taxes because she did not wish to end up in a federal cage. In the name of the Founding Fathers, let us resist all who call for fresh new expenditures on top of what we must already bear. The best way to support our country is to stop feeding these guys. Repeal the income tax and all other taxes!

Since the IRS has never said which non-payments of taxes it will not prosecute, we may regard all payments as having been made under duress. Since when did voting make theft moral? If the government decides to give half my income to poor folks and the poor folks outvote me in the next election, everything is fair and square? I certainly don't remember reading anything about that in The Virtue of Selfishness. The fact that the government has me outmanned and outgunned doesn't suddenly make it a legitimate authority. Furthermore, why should those who initiate force, who daily commit theft and kidnapping and murder have a greater claim to legitimacy than someone who minds his own business and follows the non-aggression principle? Unless you believe that might makes right, it is the gang of lself-legitimized thieves and bullies who ought to be leaving the country. A gang of rapists can outvote a girl on a dark street, too. It wasn't Soviet money to a few protest groups that turned a majority of Americans against the Vietnam War. It was the war itself. "Excess taxation" falls into the same category as "excess rights violation." Nobody is saying that nothing should be done. We simply want you to do it with your own resources.

How is this war with Russia to be financed? Where's the loot to come from? From Janet Yellen and Her Incredible Wealth Machine? From the IRS which has an unblemished record of morality and fairness (if we are to believe its boss, Mr. Obama)? From the sale of Russian oil fields (the same way Bushites once told us we'd finance the Iraq War)? Or by borrowing just a little bit more from our good friends the Chinese?

What about the bullies inside government who commit grand tax theft, nationalize healthcare, seize private weapons, persecute critics and ignore constitutional limitations? You can on the military and its commander-in-chief to do precisely nothing about those bullies. And what's this "emergency" about Israel? The U.S. has been funding their "emergency" rescue since the Kennedy administration. Go be benevolent with your own damn money. Don't talk about benevolence in the same breath as that gang of collectivists, cronies, czars and crackpots who have shredded the Constitution and are quickly reducing the nation to a financial shambles. Go be a "good friend" on your own time and with your own private resources. No money can be used morally if that money originated in theft. So 1. stop the government from stealing (and that includes the Fed's cheapening of money), 2. give something back to the victims by selling off U.S. lands and other assets, and 3. whatever you have left you can spend on protecting U.S. citizens as job number one.

Can I use the Tetrad to play the stock market? In any case, Israel became a nation in 1948.

Ho-hum, another cookie-cutter, reflective glass mediocrity. Not what comes to mind when I think of Roark or the real-life genius who inspired him.

A minimal government should act swiftly and by principle to protect its citizens' wealth from theft, including theft by government. Furthermore, a minimal government does not entail citizens who cannot act on their own. Whatever the Republic of South Africa does not appropriate from your productive work, you are free to donate to the brave little shepherd. You are also free to move there, take your stand with them and contribute in your own unique way to their survival. After living there three years, you can apply for naturalization. That way you get to act in your rational self-interest and set an example for the rest of us to follow.

Would the Russians lose it as quickly as the last time they were invaded? By all means use every weapon in your arsenal to keep your jewelry store safe. However, my jewelry store is not under attack by Russians. I need my arsenal to fight another, much closer aggressor. In the past year there were mass rapes of women in Egypt, ethnic cleansing in Burma, brutality in North Korea's gulags, hundreds of new cases of violence against women and girls in Afghanistan, more ethnic cleansing in the South Sudan, and appalling human rights violations in Mali. Any one of these cases is just as bad as anything that has happened in the Ukraine. Do I think these abuses should be stopped? You bet. Do I think that the United States taxpayer can do it? Hell, no. Item: The US government spends $121,067 per second of which it has to borrow $52,162 each second. Item: The U.S. has not even brought the last two wars it launched to a successful conclusion. And now we're supposed to march off to another cakewalk in that land that buried Napoleon and Hitler's best? If so, it will only hasten the demise of whatever is left of our republic.

The first responsibility of a "principled nation" is to respect the property rights of its own people. That means no forced transfers of wealth from A to B, even if B is the State of Israel. Recognizing the primacy of individual autonomy certainly does not preclude citizens from acting independently of their government. Any citizen of the United States (or South Africa) is free to act on his own rational selfishness, move to Israel, put on an IDF uniform, and go on raids in the West Bank. Or to donate his entire fortune to the State of Israel. They can shame the rest of us egoists by stepping out from the crowd and showing what true selfishness is.

I've known several American Jews who out of religious conviction moved to Israel and in some cases did military service there. I've also known Christians who have donated generously to the United Jewish Appeal. This is the appropriate way to support the needy: by persuasion and through one's own efforts. But why should the treasure seized from productive Americans (taxes) be used to provide for the security of a foreign power? Isn't this yet another example of forced altruism? I raised this point earlier.

Yeah, I'll bet we can kick their commie asses in less time than it took Bush to defeat Al Qaeda and win the War on Terror back in 2003. We could probably do it with half our brain tied behind our back. It will be a cakewalk.

If they fear for their lives, let them come here. If they want to stay and fight, let them do the fighting.

Let the U.S. have an open immigration policy for Israelis. Anyone who feels threatened in the State of Israel can move here. And because of Department of Defense policy, those who serve in the U.S. military can get expedited citizenship. It's a win-win deal.

Today Kerry said, "You just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests.” Really?

No, your fundamental question was what can the US choose to do about the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Now you wish to switch the issue to what principle would the U.S. be attempting to uphold in taking action against Putin's government? I do not care about principle when it comes to stopping a world class thug. Am I clear? A... My question was, "In order to best serve the security interests of its own citizens, what specifically should the United States government do with regard to Russia, Crimea and the Ukraine?" I've not seen any argument or evidence that supports the idea that doing something other than nothing would be advantageous to Americans. How would U.S. action, military, "executive," or otherwise, serve to benefit the average U.S. citizen? If the answer is along the lines that we can't allow a government to use its military might to determine the political arrangements of a particular locality, then U.S. government is going to have to perform a major overhaul of its own policies.

Selene wrote: "He became a much better behaved psychotic and he helped us with intelligence." I'm challenging this statement. Before the Reagan-authorized bombing of Libya, Gaddafi had indeed supported terrorist operations, but nothing on the scale of the bombing of Pam Am 103. I do not consider the murder of over 200 civilians the action of a well-behaved person, psychotic or otherwise. If Gaddafi was in fact a footstool for the U.S., albeit a private one, what good did it do the American people to have one of their jetliners fall out of the sky? What good did it do the people of France to suffer a similar tragedy in 1989, three years after Reagan's action? If Gaddafi was in fact a hidden U.S. asset, it didn't work out for the American people any better than it did in this case.

I can't quite imagine how stockpiling mustard gas, acquiring a military nuke and killing 259 people on an American airplane was helping "us." But I suppose if the CIA is involved anything is possible.

Really? Castro was able to do nothing after the Missile Crisis. He was isolated and except for a stream of aid from the Soviets and China, he could barely do much other than torture his own people and entertain the Columbine producer. Qaddafi cooperated with the US with intelligence and basically stayed in the sand dunes. Another local thug who was kept in check. As to your attempting to shift the argument to unrelated issues, not interested. Randy Weaver...geez that was a real smokescreen thrown into this discussion about Putin and Executive Action. A... The attempts on Castro's life were not operations merely to isolate him but to remove him and the communists from power. Many of the attempts were part of Operation Mongoose. Here is a link to a State Dept. memo who states that the goal was "help the Cubans overthrow the Communist regime." The attempts failed, the people of Cuba remained slaves to the government, and Castro did not become one bit nicer. Nor did Gaddafi become nicer as a result of assassination attempts. He joined the War on Terror only because Islamic radicals were after his own head. The fundamental question is what principle would the U.S. be attempting to uphold in taking action against Putin's government? If the principle is that a group of people should be allowed to determine their own political destiny without interference from a major military power, then the U.S. would do well to examine its own record and present policies.

Yes, certain operations continued. However, the Lybian Leapard never continued to acquire nukes and his epansionism, e.g., occupying Chad ended forever. He just was content to still be alive and able to live his Mahdi in the dessert persona. Meaningless on the world stage after the Reagan attack. He knew that his entire family was open to removal. Sorry, the "Cold War" had lots of fire and lots of dedicated folks died waging it. Now, it could be back with a different temperature, however, a more explosive and distracted world exists today. A... Gaddafi's production of mustard gas and attempts to build a nuke occurred after the U.S. attempt on his life. The normalization of relations of Libya and the West had little to do with U.S. military actions against him in 1986 and a lot to do with the fact that the U.S. "War of Terror" was targeting the very fundamentalists who were threatening his regime at home.

At this point, anybody would be better than Obama, but . . .

Yes. The same way Khadafi crawled back into his sand hole and went away to a major degtee. This is a kill or be killed world when you are dealing with evil. You go after the leader and anyone else you can behead to disrupt their "comfort levels." This happened after this.

I've asked this on another thread; in order to best serve the security interests of its own citizens, what specifically should the United States government do with regard to Russia, Crimea and the Ukraine? And I answered you. Very simply, executive action against Putifn. I meant it. It would, even if it missed, put real fear into this KGB thug. Might as well pay them back for JFK. A... I don't recall either Castro or Qaddafi becoming a fount of sweetness and light in the wake of the CIA's near misses on their heads. Nor do I believe that oligarchies crumble when a single member succumbs to the bullet or the poisoned claret. If the U.S. truly believes in local control and self-determination, what about secession for Gaza and the West Bank or for that matter Randy Weaver? Finally, cui bono? How does the average U.S. citizen benefit from Putin's death? Does he become freer, more prosperous? Or does he become another cog in the war machine as the U.S. ratchets up the garrison state in response to Russian blowback and a new cold war?