"Aye, free! Free as a tethered ass!" —W.S. Gilbert
"All the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and . . . the State should be abolished." —Benjamin Tucker
"You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." —James Madison
"Fat chance." —Sheldon Richman
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Priorities -- Please!
It is curious that people who obsess over a $400 million "bridge to nowhere" favor spending $10 billion a month in Iraq -- indefinitely. That bridge probably wouldn't have killed anyone.
I think you are underestimating (or overestimating) the American people. Many would have no reluctance in slaughtering white people in faraway lands with similar customs and not so incomprehensible languages.
Not if they had a choice about ponying up the money voluntarily, would they? I think Mencken was right about people not going to war if their misleaders and public self-servants didn't whip them into a frenzy.
I think that compulsory taxation, more than any other factor, is what drives the American war machine. Politicians can wage war while taxpayers and other innocents pay the price. As Roderick Long said in his article Anarchism as Constitutionalism: A Reply to Bidinotto, "The bloody history of the world is the result of governments buying war at less than the market price by shifting the costs to their subjects."
If the government is building it you can be sure someone somewhere died for it. I mean, $400 million in taxes probably killed someone.
ReplyDeleteDr. Higgs,
ReplyDeleteI think you are underestimating (or overestimating) the American people. Many would have no reluctance in slaughtering white people in faraway lands with similar customs and not so incomprehensible languages.
Not if they had a choice about ponying up the money voluntarily, would they? I think Mencken was right about people not going to war if their misleaders and public self-servants didn't whip them into a frenzy.
ReplyDeleteI think that compulsory taxation, more than any other factor, is what drives the American war machine. Politicians can wage war while taxpayers and other innocents pay the price. As Roderick Long said in his article Anarchism as Constitutionalism: A Reply to Bidinotto, "The bloody history of the world is the result of governments buying war at less than the market price by shifting the costs to their subjects."
ReplyDelete