It’s always easier to hurt someone if one uses a middleman, and everyone’s favorite middleman is the government. From Eric Peters, on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:
This coming year is an election year, when some of us will vote to take things that don’t belong to us – or have things done to other people that would get us locked up if we tried to do them ourselves.
My New Year’s Wish, therefore, is that people give thought to what they’re voting for – what it really means – and if it’s something they’d be uneasy doing on their own, that they not expect other people to do for them. Or, if they don’t feel uneasy, that they at least man up and be open about taking things that don’t belong to them and bullying other people to make them do what they want (and don’t want) them to do.
I wish for clear thinking – and honesty, at least insofar as the spoken and written word.
If I take your stuff without your permission or against your will – whether it’s your money or some other piece of property – it’s theft. Not “taxation.” Not some other thing that sounds civilized. The test is simple: Is it yours? Did you make it? Did you earn it? Did you buy it? Was it freely given to you? If it was any of those things, then it is yours – and by logical extension can’t belong to anyone else. And if it does not belong to anyone else, then no one else has the right to take it from you.
If they do, it is theft.
The nature of the act doesn’t change if you get someone else to do the thieving for you, or by calling it some other thing. In that case, all that changes is the way you look at it, what you tell yourself. Much in the same way that some men think it is not possible to rape one’s wife. But rape is rape – just as theft is theft.
Which brings up the issue of consent.
To continue reading: New Year’s Wish
SLL: “Never underestimate the power of a question.”***
“How can you delegate a right that you do not have?”
Example of the “Socratic interview technique” used by Jan Helfeld in an article that I read a few days ago. (Link is below.) There are also several videos: the first is a 4+min video about his technique followed by a longer version of the Senator Inouye interview. I confess, I could not watch the others.
http://www.activistpost.com/2015/12/watch-politicians-snap-when-alternative-media-journalist-asks-them-one-short-question.html?utm_source=Activist+Post+Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=b9faceb44f-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_b0c7fb76bd-b9faceb44f-387833613
(***I suspect SLL knew of and then summarized the SocIntTech, thusly.)
My first experience with Socratic technique came as an undergraduate at UCLA, in a labor economics class with Dr. Thomas Sowell. He’s written numerous books and is a featured writer on townhall.com. I believe he’s now at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. The guy was brilliant, and he loved frying unprepared students in their seats. Even more he loved asking prepared students questions in Socratic fashion, and sooner or later, he’d get them making contradictory or unsupportable statements.
That experience was repeated for me at Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall). The best I ever saw at the Socratic method was my contracts professor, Melvin Eisenberg. He had graduated first in his class at Harvard and worked on Wall Street, but his first love was teaching. You could say the sun rises in the east in the morning, and after a few minutes with him you’d be contradicting yourself. An English jurist named Wigmore said cross-examination is the greatest engine of truth ever invented, and watching, or worse, being subjected to one of Eisenberg’s grillings, it was a real life demonstration of Wigmore’s words. So never, ever underestimate the power of a question, especially in a situation where a person has to answer it. Thanks for the comment.
You are indeed fortunate. My first exposure to a Dr. Sowell book was “Knowledge and Decisions” (recommended to all by Dr. Gary North some years ago). I would vote for Dr. Sowell for President.
I don’t agree with Dr. Sowell on some things now, especially foreign policy, but he’s a class guy and I’d vote for him, too, especially over the current class of clowns.
In case you might have missed this.
Neil,
I had not seen that video. I did not know Professor Eisenberg had been associated with the Warren Commission. He deserves all the awards he’s won…a brilliant guy.