Should/Ought vs. Must
My biggest problem with liberals is that they confuse what people should or ought to do, with what they must be compelled to do! Further, they do not understand that when we get in the business of deciding what people should do, someone has to make that call, or be the arbiter, which then adds the element of capriciousness to the equation.

In other words, by way of example, once it was 'decided' that the people ought to or should pay income taxes, the arbiter, under the auspices of 'government' then assumed the authority and now gets to decide who pays and how much, and then base the rates they pay upon what appears to be capricious decision-making!

I remember watching a version of "The Prince and the Pauper" some years ago in which Charleton Heston played King Henry VIII. He had just ordered the execution of one of his advisers, and when asked what the charges would be, he replied indignantly "I do not like the color of his hat!"

My visceral reaction to that scene was much the same as the feeling I get when I try to get an answer to why the government has assumed the right to demand of me a portion of my income, and dictates how much of it they will forcibly take under the threat of penalty! Their justification sounds to me no different from the attitude of King Henry, "Because we said so!"

As an American of predominantly African descent, I find this attitude on behalf of our government appalling and frightening, for this draconian tax code has led to a new type of slavery in this country, in which the 'taxpayer' is the servant, and the 'government' is the master.

If this sounds like melodrama, consider this question; what do you think; what do you know would happen to you if you stopped paying federal income taxes?

The reason we have come to this place, is 'someone' (insert persons or party here) arbitrarily assumed it was their duty/function/authority to determine what their fellow Americans 'ought' to do, and then went about formulating a plan to force us to do it. And that is something that a government of for and by the people must never engage in.

The result is that the government has now become an entity unto itself, with its own self-interests first and foremost; no longer representing the will of the people. It is a leviathan, whose only purpose now seems to be ever-growing self perpetuation, individual rights be damned!

Freedom and liberty have been re-defined under this behemoth to the point where it bears little if any resemblance to the intent of the Constitutional framers. An intent which supported the notion that the individual must always be bigger and more important than the government, for whenever the obverse is true, liberty does not and cannot exist!

We have become people of for and by the government, largely by way of the tax code. Tragically, it was because 'someone' (insert persons or party here) in total disregard to the Constitution, thought that's how things 'ought' to be.