Mr. Ed is indisposed and unable to create TLE 230, so I've created an
substitute TLE 230 as a fill-in. This special issue contains some items
that would be in the Real TLE 230, and other items that might not.
Even so, this unreal TLE 230 is almost as real as the Real TLE 230
would have been.
I'm putting this together on Friday, so: Happy Overthrow The Government
Day! to all of you out there in bit-land.
I can't think of anything else to say, so here's some quotations to
fill out the page:
Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners
are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me,
politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.
—Robert A. Heinlein, character Claude Mordan to Hamilton Felix, in
"Beyond This Horizon," copyright 1942, Street Publications
Those who possess the power to defend themselves against threats by
their neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee of
security, live the most pleasant life with one another.
—Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 40
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to
fill the world with fools.
—Herbert Spencer (1891)
Utilitarians usually argue in the same way that Marxists and
behaviorists argue. They translate any statement you make into
utilitarian speak, and then state their translation: "What you are
really saying is...". Since utilitarian speak is incapable of
expressing any statement that would contradict the limitless and
absolute power of the state, your statements are turned into
nonsense, and they then contemptuously point out that what you
are saying is nonsense.
—James A. Donald "Natural Law and Natural Rights"
http:/catalog.com/jamesd/rights.html
So the cost of government is the life you would have had if you
had been able to keep the full value of your work. A simple way
to hold government partially accountable for this cost is to tell
your children the real reason why they can't have things. When
your daughter asks for a pony, don't tell her that it's too
expensive; after all, if you had your last twenty years of tax
money back, she could have ten ponies. Tell her the truth: that
the IRS has taken her pony and given it to an evil dictator in
North Korea who will probably eat it. While you're at it, remind
her that every time you go to work, you are helping pay for all
the dictators in the world to buy more barbed wire.
—Bill Walker, "Taxation, Subsidy, and Morality; The Cost
of Government",
http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/taxation_subsidy.htm
War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the
division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It
is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase
of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a
pretence must be made for expenditure. In reviewing the history
of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander,
not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare
that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were
raised to carry on taxes.
—Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1792). (Project Guttenberg
E-Text edition)
There are three reasons to own a gun. To protect yourself and
your family, to hunt dangerous and delicious animals, and to
keep the King of England out of your face.
—Krusty the Clown, The Simpsons, episode unknown
