Politics Of The Possible

One frequent point of departure between me and friends politically is that I oppose things that make tyranny possible.

I do not care how improbable the tyranny is, if it's possible I don't want what they propose.

My main example is guns. Registration makes it possible for them to come seize everything on the registration list. More likely is an inspection demanding to see all of the firearms I have registered. In places with registration I would be in as much trouble for not having a gun I have registered as I would if I had more guns than I had registered. Without registration, currently, all the government has is the Form 4473 of the guns I bought from a dealer. If they show up here demanding to see those guns I can tell them that they are all sold. Heck, I can actually sell them without needing to get any government official involved. What this boils down to is that it is impossible for the government to know where all the guns are.

I object to the clever fingers of government into my bank account too. This is my main objection to income taxes. For them to know we are all paying our share, they have to know how much money we make and to make sure we aren't lying about how much we make they also need to see how much money we have. They also use this information to see if we've been making money selling things they don't think we should.

Recently I heard that the Health Care bill included verbage that would allow the government to make deposits and withdrawls from my account. I oppose this. I oppose this to the point of closing all my bank accounts if it passes.

Twice in my life have I been the victim of the government overpaying me some benefit. The both times I was unaware that my eligibility had ended. Both times the government admitted it was their mistake, not mine, and I would have to pay the money back, with penalties and interest. Gee, what do you think they will do if they mistakenly cleared out my entire account? Wanna bet they never return the funds? Or that it takes so long to get my money back that it amounts to the same thing as never getting it back?

Government is not something to be trusted. There are things we need done that it does better than any other entity we've tried. There are also things that are best kept from government, because government cannot be trusted!

Joe Huffman came up with a simple barometer for some of this: http://www.joehuffman.org/Freedom/JewsInTheAttic.htm