06-18-2020, 11:20 AM
Tucker Carlson apparently has stated that “Taxation without protection is theft”. This proposition is a logical deduction from Hobbes’s theory that the prime function of the state and the reason for its existence is the safety of the citizens embraced by the social contract.
Hobbes’s theory is well-formed, comprising a powerful set of premises and deductions as to why states exist. Indeed, leaders of states often say plainly that the security of their country and its people is their foremost concern, even if their actions create the opposite condition. Many citizens, implicitly accepting the Hobbes view, expect the state’s protection.
Hobbes also contemplated the dissolution of a state and a return to a state of nature when the sovereign’s actions went directly against the protection it was supposed to be providing. (1) In such a case, what Carlson said applies, and it is an application of Hobbes’s theory. If there is no protection delivered by the state and if it’s supplanted by conditions that actually threaten the people supposedly being protected, then the taxes are not only to no beneficial effect but also are actively destructive. In this case, one of taxation without protection, the taxes are theft, assuming that there are no other compensating benefits of the state.
Carlson’s statement is directed squarely at all those government officials who misconceive their offices, powers and responsibilities by not providing the protection against rioters, vandals, insurrectionists, looters and other assorted criminals that taxpayers have a right to expect, under the Hobbesian theory. Their failures turn the taxes they have collected largely into theft.
(1) “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them” (Leviathan XXI, 144). Cited in Quentin P. Taylor “Leviathan Bound; or the Re-education of Thomas Hobbes”, which appears in Hobbes Studies 22 (2009) 123–143.
Taylor explains. “A sovereign who cannot protect the life, liberty, and property of his subjects is simply not a sovereign. This was the principal justification given by the American colonists, who in repudiating the authority of King and Parliament, claimed to have returned to a ‘state of nature.'” Michael Rozeff
Hobbes’s theory is well-formed, comprising a powerful set of premises and deductions as to why states exist. Indeed, leaders of states often say plainly that the security of their country and its people is their foremost concern, even if their actions create the opposite condition. Many citizens, implicitly accepting the Hobbes view, expect the state’s protection.
Hobbes also contemplated the dissolution of a state and a return to a state of nature when the sovereign’s actions went directly against the protection it was supposed to be providing. (1) In such a case, what Carlson said applies, and it is an application of Hobbes’s theory. If there is no protection delivered by the state and if it’s supplanted by conditions that actually threaten the people supposedly being protected, then the taxes are not only to no beneficial effect but also are actively destructive. In this case, one of taxation without protection, the taxes are theft, assuming that there are no other compensating benefits of the state.
Carlson’s statement is directed squarely at all those government officials who misconceive their offices, powers and responsibilities by not providing the protection against rioters, vandals, insurrectionists, looters and other assorted criminals that taxpayers have a right to expect, under the Hobbesian theory. Their failures turn the taxes they have collected largely into theft.
(1) “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them” (Leviathan XXI, 144). Cited in Quentin P. Taylor “Leviathan Bound; or the Re-education of Thomas Hobbes”, which appears in Hobbes Studies 22 (2009) 123–143.
Taylor explains. “A sovereign who cannot protect the life, liberty, and property of his subjects is simply not a sovereign. This was the principal justification given by the American colonists, who in repudiating the authority of King and Parliament, claimed to have returned to a ‘state of nature.'” Michael Rozeff
“If you want to know who rules over you, just look for who you are not allowed to criticize.”
― Voltaire
― Voltaire