“For Good and Evil”

 I would like to recommend a book that I found very interesting. The book is For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams.

Here are a couple of reviews that are on the book jacket:

“For Good and Evil is sad testimony to how the governments of the world cannot be made to understand that there is something between taking and being given. They cannot get wealth by just grabbing it. They cannot make wealth by just handing it out. Buy governments – as witnessed by their tax policies through history – will not learn this. Well, we must keep hammering away at their thick heads, and For Good and Evil is a 9-pound sledge.”
- P. J. O’Rourke

“I can honestly say that in the course of fifteen years of professional research and writing about taxation, I would place Charles W. Adams’ history at the absolute top of any reading list on the subject.”
- From the Foreword by Professor Alvin Rabushka, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

As the flyleaf says, “once you’ve read For Good and Evil, you’ll never feel the same about taxes.”

I own a quantity of these books. The cover price in 1993 was $29.95. I will send you a copy or copies of this book for $12.50 each (includes shipping). You can order this book by calling me at (707)-449-5979 or emailing me at johnroscoe1000@yahoo.com.

Choose Today!

“It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore, every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.” Albert Jay Nock* wrote these words in his classic critique Our Enemy, The State.

Imagine two water glasses. One is labeled “Individual” and the other is labeled “State.” All of the water is in the Individual glass. As the water is poured from the Individual glass to the State glass, there is less water in the Individual glass. The water represents your power to control yourself and your activities.

Our society continues to turn our lives and our fortunes over to the State. As we let the Statists take more of our money and more of our power, we have less and less individual freedom.

We are the poorer for it. We are poorer in resources. We are poorer in spirit. Our possibilities are poorer.
You can transfer some of the power from the State to the Individual. As Voltaire wrote, “man is free the moment he chooses to be.” Choose today.

*Albert Jay Nock (1870 – 1945) is widely regarded as one of the finest writers and critics in American Letters. His books are available from “The Nockian Society,” 42 Leathers Road, Fort Mitchell, Kentucky 41017.