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To: Cultural Jihad
your narrow definitions of fraud and force

Our narrow definitions? According to Webster's:

Main Entry: fraud
Pronunciation: 'frod
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English fraude, from Middle French, from Latin fraud-, fraus
Date: 14th century
1 a : DECEIT, TRICKERY; specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right b : an act of deceiving or misrepresenting : TRICK
2 a : a person who is not what he or she pretends to be : IMPOSTOR; also : one who defrauds : CHEAT b : one that is not what it seems or is represented to be
synonym see DECEPTION, IMPOSTURE
And from force's main entry...
3 : violence, compulsion, or constraint exerted upon or against a person or thing
These work for me. What is it that you disagree with?

...the exclusion of self from the protection against same.

Government is not our parent, as much as its promoters would like us to believe and act as if it is. It is an abstract entity composed of individuals. It is just as wrong for the government to initiate force against a citizen as it is for a citizen to initiate force against another citizen.

480 posted on 01/16/2002 7:11:49 AM PST by MadameAxe
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To: MadameAxe
John Walker had not shot or raped or stole from anyone that we know of, or defrauded anyone of their property. All the young man did was exercise his 1st Amendment right to free association, and for this the gubmint is gonna throw him in jail forever and ever, or even inject poisons into his veins! The injustice of it all! He has every Constitarian® right to defend himself against their initiation of force, eh?
482 posted on 01/16/2002 7:34:36 AM PST by Cultural Jihad
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To: MadameAxe
I've got a question about "victimless crimes." In particular, one crime that has no victim, yet is most certainly a crime. One that society can't let go unpunished and remain cohesive.

Is contempt of court a crime? Ultimately, there has to be some kind of high court, right? You could (theoretically) privatize all the lower courts, but at some point there has to be some court that can say, "if you don't abide by our rules, if you try to skip bail, we will throw you in jail."

Even though you didn't do anything but refuse to show up. You are, after all, innocent, and you never agreed (unless coerced by threat of force) to show up for trial. So there is *no* victim who is injured by your refusal to appear. Only society is injured, because if people don't show up in court, the rule of law becomes non-existant.

Any civilized society has to have a set of laws, and even if you dispense with every other branch of government, you have to, finally, try and punish crimes.

This, of course, opens up a whole can of worms. All of a sudden, it seems that government can, within reason, do anything we see proper to make society function normally. Laws don't exist to defend individual rights, but to keep society functioning because we collectively realize that we'd be far worse off in anarchy. We also, collectively, realize that defending human rights is the best way to keep society stable, and besides that's the whole reason we're trying to avoid anarchy.

That's why the gov't can tax. In fact, the oft-cited alternative is user fees which turn out to be... taxation under a different name. Hey, no one asked you if you wanted the service, they just provided it and put a gun to your head demanding payment. Much like the bums who wash your windshield whether you like it or not.

491 posted on 01/16/2002 8:39:31 AM PST by scooby
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