You could be right. Still the idea in 2000 that custom duties and excise taxes would be enough to run the government on was not communicated very well to this Greenhorn on libertarian ideas and politics in general so I spoke up about it and I did not vote for him because I saw it at the time as hypocriscy of a typical politican to get votes. When I brought it up I got jumped on with people saying things like Its Classic Liberalism and the taxes are constitution. I said " so what" that doesn't mean anything to me, its intiation of force. Hell I got off to a wrong start from the begining in the LP, I didn't know anything about poltics except I did not trust politicans, I still don't, they got to earn that trust as far as I'm concern but I fiqure now some of them have good intentions but many of them they need to cut the crap because the people who don't keep up with politics but know the results of politicans can see right through these games.--- In [email protected], "Thomas L. Knapp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Quoth terry: > > > I have a lot of respect for Harry but he is wrong taxes are not > > necessary if you got enought honest rational people in the country to > > fund the government through donnations > > Stop and hold. Harry didn't say that taxes are "necessary." He wanted > to get rid of them (and of government) entirely, and he said so > repeatedly. > > However, after 1994 he was doing a particular thing in a particular > context: He was > > 1. Running for president; > > 2. In a particular society, with a particular system. > > That system doesn't allow for itself to just be crumpled up and thrown > in the trash. Only a violent revolution could likely accomplish any > such thing, and Harry Browne wasn't fomenting violent revolution -- > even his pre-1994 anarchism was of the individualist/personalist type > that emphasized escaping, rather than smashing, authoritarian systems. > > What Browne hoped to accomplish _in electoral politics_ was to > _reduce_ the size of government to its constitutional parameters, and > to force that reduction by eliminating the income tax (actually, he > was forced to go that far -- in _Why Government Doesn't Work_ and > throughout the early part of his 1996 campaign, he touted a low-rate > flat income tax proposal, until LP "purists" tantrumed him into going > further). > > He never advertised his reduction proposals, including but not limited > to the continuation of a low, uniform tariff rate, as a libertarian > end state. He very specifically pointed to them as prerequisites to an > environment in which a libertarian end-state could become plausible > and people could decide whether they wanted to preserve some shred of > government or take it all the way. > > Tom Knapp >
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