It is always an interesting argument and I largely agree with your summary, but I still cannot buy the argument.
Abortion might be the best example. Half (or more) of our nation is completely against abortion of any kind yet our government is the largest promoter of abortion around the world (the amount of “money” involved is staggering).
I don’t support that but my tax money is indisputably used for it. I don’t support endless welfare for the able-bodied, social security disability not pegged to contributions, or public health care for people who refuse to take care of themselves, but those things are done with my tax money ruining the economic future of our nation in the current system.
It is an interesting debate and all of us (if we are being honest) fall on both sides of the equation depending on the specific question.
The aerial bombardment of Europe and Japan represented a concept of “total war” (aka complete destruction). One argument that is rarely seen, but it deserves full consideration, is how many lives were saved by “total war” versus a much more protracted war that would have resulted without aerial bombardment.
We will never know, but good arguments can be made on both sides. It is inarguable that Japan and Germany were both actively killing civilians and prisoners of war when the war ended and they had countless more who would have certainly died had the war(s) lasted longer with more “prisoners” guaranteed to enter the pipeline.
The argument against aerial bombardment is largely driven by academics who hate the West in most respects and they categorically ignore the lethal nature of the Axis powers who were quite brutal AND the likely casualty numbers among the Allies in both conflicts.
You make some good points.
I am of the opinion that as long as I live in a country with democratic (true) elections I will have to abide by the electoral results. If there are questions that I feel very strongly about then I will have to work to win that argument. But if there are things that go totally against all my moral convictions, then I will have to decide if I really can continue to live in a country like that.
As always we hope that we will never have to make such a decision, and in my case I have been lucky enough to not have had to do it - but, as you correctly point out, my tax money have often gone to uses which I have found reprehensible. Should I have lived up to my convictions and moved somewhere else? Or refused to pay taxes, with the legal effects that would have entailed? At least it has never amounted to questions of war or peace.
I think the argument about lives saved has been heard when discussing the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However,gruesome the effects were, it seems quite clear that a full scale invasion off Japan would have cost many many more lives - and then the continuing barbarities of the Japanese in mainland Asia, which would have continued for another year, have as far as I know never been added to that equation.