Taxation is theft. As all taxation is coercive in that it must be paid under threat of even greater loss of property or personal freedom and liberty. It is the expropriation of one individuals personal private property by another entity at the threat of violence. That is one of the major problems with any government that seeks to replace personal generosity and individual charity with systematic coercive taxation to finance a doctrine of entitlements, it fails by definition to adhere to the same moral code it claims to be standing for, and uses force to impose on the individual that which the individual should be free to chose for his or herself. It simply cannot exist within the non-aggression axiom.
It, in a moral sense, is no different than me forcing a stranger at gun point to buy my children dinner because I have no money (or, even if I have some money, the man I am robbing has considerably more, more even than his own family could ever use up on food). Certainly it is a moral issue preventing childhood hunger, however neither I, because of my use of force and violence (or the threat of violence), nor the stranger, who acted only under the threat of violence, can claim to have acted morally. Taking another's property through the use of violence and force is not a moral action, regardless of how the property is used after it is stolen. And feeding a child only at the point of a gun hardly qualifies as a moral act. Morality requires free will. If I am not free to choose, I can neither claim credit, nor be held morally culpable, for the action.
Those who believe in the doctrine of entitlements believe in the concept of positive rights, which simply means that you believe you have a greater 'right' to the labor, wealth or property of another then they themselves do. Once you accept that people have these 'positive rights' it only makes sense that you would believe that anyone can, and should be, conscripted into the service of others, regardless of the personal choice of the individual. This is generally done through systematic coercive taxation, and the redistribution of taken monies through various social programs (i.e. Social Security, Obamacare, unemployment benefits, etc, etc, etc). For those who believe in the doctrine of positive rights, the only immoral choice is the one made by the individual in asserting himself in his belief that he has more right to his time, labor, property and wealth then the 'others' who claim a 'positive right' to those same things. Such a person is generally attacked by those claiming a greater right to his property for being 'greedy' for claiming a right to the fruits of his own labor (anyone else see the irony here?), or immoral for daring to oppose a system based entirely on the forcible appropriation (theft) of personal property (more irony), or uncaring, though as I explained above, nobody gets to claim a moral victory when choice is removed from the equation.
The concept of positive rights and the entitlement doctrine are 100% counter to the belief in negative rights (freedom to exercise ones own will, confined only within the parameters of the equal rights of others, and to lay sole claim to your own time, labor and property) that this nation was founded upon. Negative and positive rights can never exist together. They are mutually exclusive. And, as this nation was founded on the Classical Liberal ideals of negative rights as laid out in the Lockean tradition (as opposed to the modern 'liberal' ideals of entitlements and positive rights as laid out in the Marxist tradition) , the belief in, and actions based upon, positive rights truly are anathema to the principles this nation was founded upon, and the document of that foundation, the Constitution, and truly are un-American.
It, in a moral sense, is no different than me forcing a stranger at gun point to buy my children dinner because I have no money (or, even if I have some money, the man I am robbing has considerably more, more even than his own family could ever use up on food). Certainly it is a moral issue preventing childhood hunger, however neither I, because of my use of force and violence (or the threat of violence), nor the stranger, who acted only under the threat of violence, can claim to have acted morally. Taking another's property through the use of violence and force is not a moral action, regardless of how the property is used after it is stolen. And feeding a child only at the point of a gun hardly qualifies as a moral act. Morality requires free will. If I am not free to choose, I can neither claim credit, nor be held morally culpable, for the action.
Those who believe in the doctrine of entitlements believe in the concept of positive rights, which simply means that you believe you have a greater 'right' to the labor, wealth or property of another then they themselves do. Once you accept that people have these 'positive rights' it only makes sense that you would believe that anyone can, and should be, conscripted into the service of others, regardless of the personal choice of the individual. This is generally done through systematic coercive taxation, and the redistribution of taken monies through various social programs (i.e. Social Security, Obamacare, unemployment benefits, etc, etc, etc). For those who believe in the doctrine of positive rights, the only immoral choice is the one made by the individual in asserting himself in his belief that he has more right to his time, labor, property and wealth then the 'others' who claim a 'positive right' to those same things. Such a person is generally attacked by those claiming a greater right to his property for being 'greedy' for claiming a right to the fruits of his own labor (anyone else see the irony here?), or immoral for daring to oppose a system based entirely on the forcible appropriation (theft) of personal property (more irony), or uncaring, though as I explained above, nobody gets to claim a moral victory when choice is removed from the equation.
The concept of positive rights and the entitlement doctrine are 100% counter to the belief in negative rights (freedom to exercise ones own will, confined only within the parameters of the equal rights of others, and to lay sole claim to your own time, labor and property) that this nation was founded upon. Negative and positive rights can never exist together. They are mutually exclusive. And, as this nation was founded on the Classical Liberal ideals of negative rights as laid out in the Lockean tradition (as opposed to the modern 'liberal' ideals of entitlements and positive rights as laid out in the Marxist tradition) , the belief in, and actions based upon, positive rights truly are anathema to the principles this nation was founded upon, and the document of that foundation, the Constitution, and truly are un-American.
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