Everyone should know by now that I'm morally opposed to taxation in all its forms.  Many don't quite understand why that is the case, and those that do tend to disagree based on utilitarian reasoning.  If someone has seen my arguments on facebook, read this blog, or spoken to me in person for even fifteen minutes, and still do not understand my moral opposition to taxation, there is nothing I can do to help him.

The difficulty with utilitarian justifications (for anything, not just taxation) is that it compartmentalizes individual actions.  Why is it moral to abort Hitler but immoral to abort someone else's baby?  Why is it immoral to mug a guy in a back-alley (assuming you don't really, really need that money) but it is moral to take a percentage of their hard-earned wages against their will?

Utilitarian thought obfuscates moral and ethical considerations with a certain pragmatic results-oriented thought in which a perceived end can justify any action.  One useful tool to double-check utilitarian arguments for rectitude is to find the logical form of the argument being made and replace terms with functionally equivalent terms and see if the argument still matches one's intuition.

Sax and Violence is an excellent, artful, and cogent demonstration of this approach to double-checking a utilitarian argument.  There are those out there who will find that both taxes and saxes match their intuition... and those people terrify me.  There are those that will discover that both taxes and saxes are counter-intuitive after reading this article, as well.  However, it would take an act of willful ignorance to say that one is morally justified whilst the other is not.

You can watch a video that has a reading of the text and a further exploration of the idea, but the audio quality is a little shoddy.

A book written by Mark Corske was recently made into a pseudo-documentary film that is very well-produced and well- written.  I strongly recommend that people watch the video on youtube.  It's an hour long, but it can easily be played at 1.25X or 1.5X speeds.  It gets a little choppy at 2X speed.  It is well worth the time to anyone who has felt that "something isn't right" about the world they live in, and it's even thought-provoking to those who haven't.
Reading the book would be warranted, too. However, I feel that watching the youtube video for free is much less a commitment than buying and reading the book.  There's also the issue of market forces... there is a certain AnCom vein that runs through this work, so one's money may be better spent on Rothbard or Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

If one hour is too long or someone doesn't want to watch a documentary, there is a third option to the documentary and book.  Here is a 30-minute interview that covers pretty much all the same information and ideas, but without a cool soundtrack and powerful visuals.

In a speech presented in 1994, Murray Rothbard explores "just war theory" in a very thorough and relevant manner, as is Rothbard's MO.  The transcript of the speech can be found here, and the audio of the speech is in the youtube video below:

Exploring the war crimes of various American and European leaders, the nature of the constitution and the articles of confederation exploring the cause for Somalia's current crises, pointing out the largely-ignored neo-puritan cult which swept up the Union and caused an unjust religious crusade against a neighboring nation, calling out our own government's (and all powerful governments') ongoing trend of abandoning just war theory in favor a total war doctrine which declares one's own citizens and civillians of neighboring nations as legitimate and desirable targets for the military. 

This speech is especially pertinent this week, after the social media and cultural debacle surrounding cultural revisionism and violations of people's rights at the hand of the government in the name of "equality".

It's Saturday! That means you'll have a couple hours to kill tonight, right?  I hope so, because this is a solid biographical lecture on George Washington.  The good, the bad, the ugly, all wrapped into a discussion from his parents all the way to his death.  Seperating fact from fiction, and an earnest attempt at seeing the man behind the myth.St

Stephan Molyneux is still a nutter, but he does sometimes get things spot-on.  This is one of those occasions.  This is, essentially, what came to mind every time someone brought up George Washington as an anecdote in discussions concerning politics.  Having just watched this video (over the course of the last week), I now have a more complete set of facts to draw on and a better chronology to set it in.  This comes in handy when thinking about "restoring the republic" or "what the founding fathers wanted", so everyone ought to watch this.

No real post today, I was too busy doing mother's day stuff and being furious at the wholly criminal kidnap and abuse of a family in Kentucky.

Instead, I bring you a very pretty picture and thought-provoking thought from Henry David Thoreau:

You can buy Walden here at an affordable price.  The book is a fun and poetic exploration of living authentically, even if the philosophical underpinnings are a little haphazard.

http://christophercantwell.com/2015/04/28/an-open-letter-to-baltimore-rioters/
It's always encouraging when someone who I generally consider to be very intelligent and well-informed says the exact things that I have either previously said or have been thinking.  In this case, it's an honest and frank assessment of the situation in many major cities around the continent.

Not enough people who insist they are interested in freedom are willing to honestly and unabashedly address the issue of "what to do when faced with an adversary which possesses a monopoly on force".  Cantwell, in his rhetoric at least, sets an example for anyone who wishes to consider themselves freedom-minded.

I was going to post a follow-up to yesterday's resource suggestion, but I wanted to share this first.  This is the Story of Your Enslavement, as told by Stefan Molyneux.  The video is short, sweet, and simple.  There are a lot of details that are not addressed, but that's what you get for wanting to cover it in 13 minutes as opposed to a lifetime of literature.  Simplicity aside, this is the truth, spoken directly and non-judgementally.

I do not endorse Molyneux, as a lot of what he says and does is utterly insane.  However, about two thirds of what he says and half of what he does is right on the money.  This video is spot-on.

I've decided to post an almost-daily "resource suggestion" for people's elucidation on what I'm reading and listening to and why.  The hope is that if people are interested by what I have to say or where I get my crazy ideas, that they can come here and see them.

The selection for today is the forward  written and read by Brett Veinotte.  It was written for an equally amazing book titled "Legally Kidnapped", which I also recommend that people read.  For now, though, the audio of this one episode of School Sucks Podcast should suffice.

http://schoolsucksproject.com/podcast-346-work-outside-the-system/