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My 2c on this tax=theft debate. There are a number of words in our language which have a normative definition. For example, one of them is "weed". The definition of a weed is usually stated as "a plant growing in the wrong place". But the definition itself provides no guidance as to what might be a right or wrong place for any given plant. So, you can't determine in abstraction whether a given plant is a weed. By itself, a statement that a particular plant is a weed can not be assessed as either true or false. You must find some kind of legitimate design for the garden in which it is growing. You can then say that the plant is a weed with respect to that design. I'll take "theft" to be a normatively defined word as well. I won't classify the statement "tax is theft" as being either True or False, instead, I'll just call it Libertarian.
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