Look, either I am the sole owner of my mind and body and the labor through which I use them to generate wealth, or I am not.  If someone else has a prior claim on some portion of my labor, then I am a slave.

Whether I “only” have to work the first few months of the year to pay “my” taxes is irrelevant.  As a single man with no children, if someone can force me to pay for their child’s education, support them when they are unemployed, or otherwise subsidize their economic existence, then I am a slave.  If someone can enter my house without my permission and whip me into the fields to harvest his crop, then I am a slave.  The fact that I remain “free” to gather ‘round the campfire at night and sing Kumbaya is irrelevant to my underlying condition.

The urge is always to bend and modify the principle of self-ownership, in order to seem more “mainstream” — more “reasonable” — more “compassionate.”  But unless you have actual principles, define them clearly, and stand by them, you will certainly wind up on the menu of cannibalism that is modern American politics.

If you can agree that I own my body, then how can you justify funding an apparatus that seeks to jail me for deciding which plant extracts or vaccines I want to ingest (or not) in the privacy of my home, or who I invite to share my bed, or whether and how I choose to reproduce, or how I choose to educate or school my children?  Should I really prefer a “new and improved” form of police state because it goes to church and wears bow ties and tweed jackets?  You’ve heard the anecdote; “You can put a suit on a pig…”