From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 17:41:10 MDT
On Thursday, August 29, 2002 1:28 PM Brian D Williams talon57@well.com
wrote:
>>I haven't been in this country's or any country's military service
>>but I still pay a dear price every April 15th, lemme tell ya.
>
> Military personnal pay taxes too, subtract from both sides, your
> back to zero.
I was going to try to stay off this thread...
All government employees are paid out of taxes. This includes Marines
and all other servicemen and women. I.e., they are net tax receivers.
Since they are paid out of taxes, they are receiving stolen goods. It
doesn't matter if the thief -- the government -- takes some of it back.
That is no different than a mob boss paying his enforcers, then charging
them for using his cars and guns and being paid back out of the same
monies he paid them with. (Imagine if taxes were reduced to zero in
stages. The salaries of all government employees would eventually also
go to zero! The salaries of net tax payers would rise.)
Also, it doesn't matter whether one walks a walk for that person's
position to be true or false, right or wrong. To use an extreme
example, the September 11th hijackers certainly walked their walk --
which is worlds apart from yours and mine. This does not mean they were
right. At best, it means they believed in what they preached. That's
all. (As an analogy, imagine a scientist who claims the Earth is flat
and spends his whole life fighting for that theory. We can admire his
tenacity, but his conviction does not add any weight to his assertions.)
That said, it's good you did what you thought was right. That means you
have integrity (in this one area at least, though I assume it's a trait
of your whole character and not isolated to military service). Even so,
just because others may or may not have done the same as you does not
mean they don't value freedom as much.
I also don't buy into the equivalence of obeying the government -- since
that is what military service is -- necessarily is serving one's
country. (This is over and above whether one should even serve one's
country -- or any such large collective.) You might believe it is, but
that's only based on what you believe is serving one's country. Another
person might have a view at odds with you that would be strictly against
such service.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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