“The first great lesson to learn about taxation is that taxation is simply robbery. No more and no less. For what is ‘robbery’? Robbery is the taking of a man’s property by the use of violence or the threat thereof, and therefore without the victim’s consent. […] But if taxation is robbery, then it follows as the night the day that those people who engage in, and live off, robbery are a gang of thieves. Hence the government is a group of thieves, and deserves, morally, aesthetically, and philosophically, to be treated exactly as a group of less socially respectable ruffians would be treated.”

— Murray Rothbard.

11:07 pm  •  6 January 2012  •  75 notes