> While looking over the senatorial candidates for my district, I find myself looking at the Libertarian candidate and asking questions.
>
> From the candidate's website: "The proper role of government is to protect our rights. Since rights can only be violated by force, specifically by the initiation of force, government's just role is to stop and apprehend those who initiate force: criminals, con artists, terrorists, invading armies." This sounds good. He's saying the government should have a police force and an army. This, I am led to understand, is one of the central tenets of Libertarian thought.
>
> The thing that bothers me is his stance on taxes. "Theft is theft, whether it is a mafia syndicate or a government doing the stealing. As a first step towards the abolition of coercive taxation, I call for the repeal of the federal income tax, concurrent with a dramatic reduction in federal spending." He's running for a federal position, so he's saying "federal", but I believe he means that local, state, and federal income taxes should be abolished.
>
> So, if Libertarians were in charge, all taxation practices were cancelled, where would the money come for the police forces and army?
>
> -FP

Everybody wants it both ways. The government should provide for us and protect us and give people assistance when they need it, but they should somehow do it with money that no one wants to give them. I guess some people think that since the government prints the money, whenever they need some, they can just print more. I don't enjoy paying taxes, but I appreciate that the money (usually) goes towards things that are good for me or for the nation as a whole.
I was listening to NPR the other day and two of the top issues concerning people in Oklahoma were education and taxes (meaning that people think they're too high). Everybody gripes about the sorry state of our education system because teachers aren't paid enough and so on, but when it comes time to vote for more taxes to go to education, people won't pass it. Argh.

alissa