”Legitimate” is not the same as right.

Would you do on your own what you allow others to do on your behalf? Would *you* go to your neighbor’s employer and demand a portion of his salary? Would you chase down your neighbor as he’s driving to work and stop him under threat of force because he has an outdated sticker on his car? Of course you wouldn’t. Why would you tolerate such behavior from others claiming to act on your behalf? Don’t ever vote on something you’re not willing to do on your own.

Anekantavad responds:

It wasn’t I who started using the word ‘legitimate’, and I didn’t say that it is right that we should have to have a huge military to seal us off from the rest of the world. But when has it even been the ‘right’ that happens in this world?

Secondly, the division of labour we have in oursociety means that some people are? lawyers, some are dishwashers and some are cops. When my appendix burts I get a doctor to treat me. Are you saying that’s immoral?

Then me again, with the rest of want I wanted to write (except for the first two paragraphs) but couldn’t because it wouldn’t fit into the first comment because of YouTube’s character limitation:

I don’t care that you’re not the one who *started* using “legitimate.” Answer the question at hand: Would you do on your own what you allow others to do on your behalf? My bet’s on NFW.

Hire anyone you wish to remove your appendix, just don’t compel me or anyone else to pay for it.

There are only two ways for humans to interact: reason and force. Guess where taxation falls.

There is no way around it: “No nation in world history has ever voted its way out of straits like these, and this one won’t, either.“

I look at that amount and imagine what I could have done with that.

That’s almost three times what I have in my 401k.

How can anyone push that rock up that hill?

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.3250

Matt Taibbi hasn’t a clue:

“In the Randian ethos, called objectivism, the only real morality is self-interest, and society is divided into groups who are efficiently self-interested (the rich) and the ”parasites” who wish to take their earnings through taxes.”

Got a cite for that bullshit, Taibbi?

Look here, Taibbi, you clearly haven’t read and don’t understand Rand, and, more importantly, you don’t understand moral interaction with your fellow humans.

Morality is this: don’t hurt anyone.

That’s what self interest is all about. Pursue whatever you wish, as long as you don’t harm anyone.

Get your head straight.

http://www.flexyourrights.com/10_Rules

If they come to your door, step onto your porch with the door locked behind you.

Via Say Uncle.

Just the pure goggle-eyed violent stupidity of it could be the tinder of insurrection. The proverbial final straw.

“In a normal democracy?”

I’m not sure what your idea of a “normal democracy” is, Dionne, but in American democracy the Congress doesn’t take over an industry…

Democracy is democracy is democracy is mob rule is mob rule is mob rule.

By any other name, flavor, or stench, democracy always has been, is now, and always will be slow death by creeping mob lynching. There is no honor in defending the indefensible.

Three recent items, all excellent examples of that fact:

• Government-paid hell-raisers
• Thoreau on separating oneself from the state
• Judicial terrorists

See the binding principle?

Ruthie: “In the real world…”

The nanosecond that phrase is used, it reveals that the user imagines that he (or Ruthie, in this case) is imbued with some special perception, which common folk, like everyone who disagrees with her, is not capable of understanding, but must simply comply because she said so.

Whenever you see anyone use the phrase, “in the real world”, be assured, that author is most certainly not aware of what it means to live in this world.

Carved into the marble behind me are the words of our first Commander-in-Chief:  “When we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen.”  Just as the contributions that our servicemen and women make to this nation don’t end when they take off their uniform, neither do our obligations to them.  And when we fulfill those obligations, we aren’t just keeping faith with our veterans; we are keeping faith with the ideals of service and sacrifice upon which this republic was founded. [emphasis mine]

The thug-in-chief is a manipulating liar. America was forged upon the ideal of individual liberty, not servitude and sacrifice:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

There was no screeching appeal to either service or sacrifice in attendance at the birth of America.

Obama wants you to think that you owe something to people you don’t know, haven’t ever met, and never will meet. He wants you to accept the idea that you owe something to everyone else simply because you exist.

There is no premise more wrong.