Michael Annes’ letter on March 3 puts forth the proposition that a person should not be forced to do something he considers immoral just because a democratic majority says that he should. Perhaps unintentionally, he implies we should exchange democracy for fascism if the latter will provide an end to federal aid programs.

While I respect his subjective moral judgment insofar as it is subjective, he did nothing to justify his position. Instead, he starts with the assumption that welfare programs are inherently immoral and sets out to prove that assumption with silly analogies that fail to consider the real world and some of its most basic phenomena (e.g. cause and effect).

And now I’d like to take a stab at his method of moral reasoning to defend my claim that forcing people to fund national defense through taxation is immoral:

Suppose you have a friend who swears to protect you from injury or death at the hands of others if you give him a small percentage of your income each paycheck. Now, suppose in the process of “protecting” you, he launches a preemptive strike on a known bully and his goons, and he justifies his offensive by lying to you about the threat this person actually poses. Then, in the course of dealing with this guy and the aftermath of taking him out, your friend and protector contributes to a death toll of roughly 100,000 innocent non-bullies, which results in a whole bunch of people (most of whom never wanted to harm you before) eyeing you with distrust, fear and hatred.

For obvious reasons, you want to stop contributing that portion of your paycheck to defense, but, if you do, you could be fined or thrown in jail for failure to pay. Are these penalties moral? Or, more on point, is this oversimplified analogy to our relationship with Iraq the most informed way to discuss our moral obligations?

Matthew Myrick is a third-year law student.