A recent rash of libertarian-leaning right-wing podcasters’ rehashing of a shopworn takedown of socialism has bothered me to the point of launching into this essay. It goes something like “Why is this still a thing? When are they going to realize that IT DOESN’T WORK, and drop it?”

Contrary to the worldview of progressives, taxation and the coercion it brings are not part of a "social contract." Instead, they are implemented by force.

Original Article: "You Don’t Like It? Leave! The Telling Sophistry of Tax Apologists"

What better way to “celebrate” tax season than to talk taxes? Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Taxation is not theft. It’s just the law of the land. You want to live in this country, you pay the long-established, constitutional, customary tax. If you’re not okay with that, there are plenty of other countries to choose from whose customs and edicts you may find more agreeable. Just go live there, and best of luck to you! So as long as you have that right of exit, the taxes confiscated from your income do not represent any initiation of force, coercion, or violation whatsoever.
This is a valuable argument, to be sure. Not only is it completely wrong but its underlying premise reveals a certain sensibility that is, at the very least, intriguing. If we peel back the layers of this statement,

We currently find ourselves in a bizarre wasteland of mainstream political discourse. These days no US institution, and indeed no corner of American life, is safe from politicization or even from becoming a mouthpiece for extreme activism.
Since last November, Yale, Harvard, and other top US law schools have opted out of participation in the annual rankings by US News & World Report, a long-established go-to reference for how the nation’s laws schools stack up against each other. While it has many competitors, the US News’ rankings are among the most well-known and prestigious.
These schools have issues with how their rankings are formulated, which is interesting given that the disputed calculations routinely rank them at the top. Exploring this question leads to bigger questions, pointing