Stefanie wrote:
Taxation is not theft, because consent has been given.

I'm not sure "moving somewhere else" is really a credible argument to the assertion that government is consensual. Government may be "legitimate" because it is sufficiently democratic, but it is not a consensual relationship.

First, it is not practical to simply "go somewhere else." You don't have complete freedom to organize in another location per your convictions. All of the other places are taken by other people with other rules, and they might not even be willing to let you in, assuming there is a system on the planet that you find satisfactory.

Second, as ironic as it was that the south fought to preserve the notion of government through "consent of the governed" in spite of the fact that the primary matter of dispute was slavery and southern slaves did not consent to their own conditions nor to the government of the south, the fact is that the notion of consensual government lost the civil war. Won was a country that was more legitimate, free, and egalitarian, but less consensual. I don't think the South's concept of consent (of an elite social caste) would be preferable, or necessarily extensible to cover the broader modern electorate, but it would be something...

RE: FIVE CONSERVATIVE MYTHS