Walter, Walter, Walter… Sigh

Sometimes a person’s blind hypocrisy pains me.

Walter Williams could be a genius… if he could just unfetter his mind from those bits of statism of which he approves.

In this piece he clearly explains what constitutes theft—then he spoils the whole thing by making unwarranted exceptions to soothe his biases:

“To condemn legalized theft is not an argument against taxes to finance the constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government; we are all obligated to pay our share of those.”

Talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it, too!

Walter, sorry but theft is theft even if you like what the stolen money is spent on. To condemn theft is to realize there is no ethical difference between “legalized theft” and “illegal theft”. Both are utterly unethical.

Just because the Constitution empowers theft in order to carry out certain functions doesn’t make it OK. You are NOT “obligated” to help a tyrant control you, nor to help him finance it, just because someone once wrote up a rather weak “social contract” and claimed it would apply to you centuries later. Anyone who could possibly, under any imaginable circumstances, have been bound by that agreement has been dead for centuries. If you like the Constitution, invite people to sign it, individually, and live under it voluntarily. I won’t sign.

You are partly right, Walter. Liberty isn’t for wimps. But, apparently, it isn’t a good fit for the ethically inconsistent, either.

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