It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.
Interpretation
The quote discusses the disparity between moral objections to killing and the obligation to financially support violent state actions.
Karl Hess highlights the ironic contradiction in how society often exempts individuals from military service for moral reasons but does not extend this understanding to those who choose not to fund systems of violence through taxation. This observation prompts a reflection on the values placed on life versus financial contributions, suggesting that the state prioritizes monetary support over ethical considerations regarding the sanctity of life.
In practice
Used in a debate about military service and moral obligations.
We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.
They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that it’s all choice and chance.
The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.
The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.
When God wants to judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers.
You wish me to tell you why and how God should be loved. My answer is that God himself is the reason he is to be loved.
To know that nothing happens in God's world apart from God's will may frighten the godless, but it stabilizes the saints.
The critical element in meditation practice is beginning again. Everyone loses focus at times, everyone loses interest at times, and everyone gets distracted over and over again. What is essential, and also incredibly transforming, is realizing that we have the ability to begin again, without blaming or judging ourselves, without thinking we have failed, without losing heart, we can, and need to, constantly be beginning again.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
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