Well JR, of course Libertarians can oppose taxes and do so ethically
even though the US COnstitution gives Congress the power to collect
taxes but you do notice the Constitution says Congress Shall have the
power to collect taxes, it does not say Congress shall collect taxes,
so A libertarian Congress would not have to collect
taxes.
Now as for authority, well politically etical authority does not
only come from what Mao said a barrel of a gun, so libertarian
political ethics rejects that arbitraty floating abstract subjective
idea, authority must be based as far as possible on reasonble
arguments of justice, as Lysander Spooner said I did not sign, I did
not consent to the constitution, as an extra many of my ancestors(
both European and Indian) were here before there was a US, so i'm not
sure they aggred with either the Articles of Confederation or the US
Constitution, plus i'm not sure those who live in Tennessee in 1790
agreed to become a state in the US because only about a third of the
adult population agreed to that, much less in what was then the
western counties where statehood did not get a majority even of those
who were allowed to vote. Besides every single person who voted for
the Constitution and state hood have long since
died.
Randy Barnett makes a good case in his book Restoring the Lost
Constitution makes a good case why " We the People in the preamble
can not mean everyone living in the US, or living in the US then. He
doesn't say this but in my view we the people can only be the
delegates who voted for the constitution and the people who voted for
the delegates to the state conventions and the national convention,
no one else, if the delegates thought otherwise tough cookies it was
a false assumption of power on their
part.
Now Barnett does say the government is bound by the constitution
and that we should obey any just action by the government as we would
any just action of enforcing the law when the government follows the
correct action of the
constitution.
The constitution no where forbids a state from leaving the
union, giving the 10 th amendment if the constitution does not forbid
it the state can do it thus if a state does not like the federal
taxes the state can leave the
union.
Now what if you own a 100 acre farm and you don't want to pay
taxes, well you can secde from the state, you don't secde from the
union but if you secde you and your land from the state you can not
join the union without the okay of the state you left. Now if the
state leaves the union the federal government can take your land back
into the union if you want it and they want
it.
So what happens if you say me and my land will no longer be a part
of the state. First will the title the county issued you on behalf of
the state be any good any more? I suppose you will want to go to town
to buy things and sell things can the town charge you when you come
into town, can they require the merchants to charge
you?
Ok so you stay home all the time but you still sell things to
others within the state, the federal government can charge a custom
duty and so can the state but the states duty must be just enough to
cover inspection costs. Now if you live on the coast or the border
the government should not charge you a custom duty for trading with
other countries but they might pencil in a duty on you indirectly by
increasing the custom duties of those countries that trade with you,
of course if the countries you trade with never trades with the US
then you will not pay a custom duty indirectly unless the countries
they trade with trades with the US and can pass a custom duty to you
in a very indirect way. Then again you may be self sufficent and not
need to trade or trade with people that only live and work on the
open seas but the percentage of the last two I think I can safley say
is less than 1% of the population.--- In
[email protected], "J R" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Taxes and Libertarians
>
> I guess there is a fundamental disconnect between the Constitution
and
> Libertarianism. While the Libertarian philosophy is perfectly free
to
> oppose taxation in any form, the Libertarian Party can't pound
their
> shoes in support of the Constitution AND oppose taxes. Article 1,
> Section 8 of the Constitution clearly gives Congress the power to
> impose taxes:
>
> "The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties,
> Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common
> Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties,
> Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States"
>
> I realize certain individuals will twist and turn some legalese
mumbo-
> jumbo to try to show how what it says isn't what it says, but I am
just
> a plain old feller who reads and understands plain old English. And
I
> know what it says. And I know what it means. The 16th amendment is
only
> a clarification or perhaps even a limitation on A1,S8.
>
> Since the law providing for taxation is the Constitution, statutes
in
> the tax code are merely the means of executing the Constitution.
>
> Now, it is entirely disuseful to run around trying to claim the
> government has no authority to collect taxes, income or otherwise.
That
> is patently false. It is much more useful to run around trying to
> minimize taxes by eliminating government spending on things not
within
> the purview of the federal government as defined by the
Constitution.
> It is this argument that will win support and votes for
Libertarians
> inside or outside the LP. Is is this argument that requires a
> Libertarian to oppose federal financing of stem cell research. It
is
> this this argument that requires a Libertarian to abolish all the
> social engineering laws passes in the last century and half. It is
this
> argument that requires a Libertarian to abolish most of the cabinet
> departments.
>
> That is all for now.
>
> LIBERTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> Vjklander
>
