About Ed and Elaine Brown, the couple who refused to pay taxes..

[slickss]

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your point? oooh you're makin a statement about Iraqi prisoners, I see.

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Yes, I was. I agree it was fairly off-topic and I hope it won't completely derail this thread.

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So you're saying you're against them being imprisoned and tortured unlawfully?

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Very much so.

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Well if you pay your taxes, then you're funding what you're against. Does that make you a hypocrite? If not, it means you're just a scaredy cat.

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Are we seriously down to this level? This is a ridiculous way to argue.

[slickss]

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So where is the "philosophical jam"?

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Well, you get into a philosophical jam if you support a political movement which is based on being 'ultimately responsible for your own actions' and then you don't act in accordance with the movement's beliefs.

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[pvn]

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So where is the "philosophical jam"?

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Well, you get into a philosophical jam if you support a political movement which is based on being 'ultimately responsible for your own actions' and then you don't act in accordance with the movement's beliefs.

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I would agree with this if it were qualified with "absent coercion".

[tame_deuces]

I'll grant that my proposed 'philosophical jam' was abit black&white, but certainly there are many 'posers' in the radical political camps.

[slickss]

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I would agree with this if it were qualified with "absent coercion".

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Why didn't you just write that right away? Your DUCY-style of debating only slows down the discussion.

[Subfallen]

I don't see how the Browns imagined they had a legitimate argument, as courts all the way to the top have ruled against tax evasion.

If I was going to make a statement, I wouldn't wait to be arrested, I would just go up to the Marshalls and offer my wrists for the handcuffs. What's the point of delaying the inevitable?

[Misfire]

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I don't understand this point of view. As near as I can tell, they never actually said "we're not paying taxes because we don't believe in it and we're making a stand". They said "we're not paying taxes because the written rules we think are valid say we don't have to". To me, that makes them as "heroic" as someone who says "we're not paying our insurance premiums because we don't believe the contract says we have to". There's very little priniciple in the discussion at all as far as I can see.

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Perhaps they believe in the rule of law, whereas, according to them, the IRS doesn't. They took a stand against what they saw as an unlawful action by a government agency. Is that unprincipled?

[Misfire]

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I don't see how the Browns imagined they had a legitimate argument, as courts all the way to the top have ruled against tax evasion.

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Jury nullification FTW.

[bobman0330]

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I don't understand this point of view. As near as I can tell, they never actually said "we're not paying taxes because we don't believe in it and we're making a stand". They said "we're not paying taxes because the written rules we think are valid say we don't have to". To me, that makes them as "heroic" as someone who says "we're not paying our insurance premiums because we don't believe the contract says we have to". There's very little priniciple in the discussion at all as far as I can see.

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Perhaps they believe in the rule of law, whereas, according to them, the IRS doesn't. They took a stand against what they saw as an unlawful action by a government agency. Is that unprincipled?

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+

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Jury nullification FTW.

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=

???

[Misfire]

Doesn't make sense when you don't consider they were responses to completely unrelated statements.