08. The Spirit of Market Anarchy (2.1): A Critique of Sam Harris and his beloved Welfare Statism

Part II: The Scope of the Argument, and Why it Matters In Part II, we outline the trajectory of the argument that I lay out in our 8-Part series, and pinpoint the origin of cultural squabbles in religion that have spilled over into public policy throughout the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Progressive Income Taxation--the enabling of the second plank of the Communist Manifesto. The 16th Amendment is one of the most disastrous developments in American cultural life, and it is the agent by which religious intrusion into public life has been and remains a governmental problem for those of a secular temper. The 16th Amendment stands at the root of nearly every inroad into violations of the First Amendment that exists, and is the primary form of violence in American society today. In outlining this argument, I engage in a critique of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins--the former in his assertion that the argument that "taxation is theft" is an economic cartoon, and the latter in his contention that America was "founded in secularism." Neither of these arguments can be defended consistently on a theoretical, historical, or economical level. These arguments are religious in nature, and are not coordinated to anything approaching reality. The bulk of this episode is dedicated to the "taxation is theft" argument, which is an argument that one must understand in order to comprehend future chapters, and in particular the historico-economic arguments of future episodes. So, be prepared to open your mind, test your ethical precepts, put your patriotism to the test, and to think dangerously. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/culture-anarchy/support