"We Have a Voluntary Tax System"

This is amazing. I see this all the time, but here we have an extreme example of it. Here is an interviewer struggling to explain to Sen. Harry Reid, as if he were a five year old child, that taxation by definition is money collected by force, and the Senate Majority Leader understands less than the five year old would understand.

Reid's argument, if you can call it that, is far too stupid to deserve a refutation. What is worth thinking about is: Why do so many people not get this very simple fact, the fact that we see him gagging on here?

What I suspect is that that they are evading a further very simple fact. What fact? Here it is:

A law requiring a to do x can only be just if it would also be just to hold a at gunpoint and force a to do x.

I just don't see how anyone can deny this, anyone that is who is not a complete idiot (again, see the above video_).

This would apply to any given quantum of tax money. Hence a corollary would be a principle at least as strong as that stated by Calvin Coolidge long ago: "The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only
a species of legalized larceny."