The organized crime called the government takes your money, but if you resist, you’re a criminal. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
Ayn Rand – channeling Aristotle – tried to get people to see the principle underlying seemingly disparate things; her purpose (and his) being to encourage people to think in terms of principles in order to get them to see that seemingly disparate things are often the same things.
Theft, for instance. The defining principle is the taking of another’s property; this taking does not become not-taking by calling it “taxes” rather than theft. Once this is understood, much else follows.
People are not taught to think in such terms for the obvious reasons. If – as in our example – a person thinks “taxes” are somehow different than theft, because the taking (by force or its threatened use) of someone else’s property is called something else, then he will accept and even endorse the theft.
There are people who understand the sameness – and people who see a false difference.
The two are at odds, for obvious reasons. But there is an important difference. Those who see that taking someone else’s property is theft – no matter what the people doing (and endorsing) the taking call it – are the ones who do not want to have any part, either directly or indirectly, in the taking of other people’s property.
“And God said love your enemy and I obeyed him and loved myself.”
Khalil Gibran