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From: kjm@ut-ngp.UTEXAS (Ken Montgomery)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: "Tax Supported" Churches.
Message-ID: <2458@ut-ngp.UTEXAS>
Date: Sat, 5-Oct-85 00:04:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.2458
Posted: Sat Oct  5 00:04:27 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Oct-85 04:27:54 EDT
References: <459@spice.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA>
Distribution: net
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
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[]
>I seem to remember that there was some very early court case involving some
>state vs. the Federal Government, where the state wanted to tax federal land.
>The judge said something to the effect that "the power to tax is the power to
>destroy", and ruled that the Federal Government was immune from the tax since
>it should not be subject to interference from the state.
>
>It seems to me that the people on this net who are attacking tax exemptions
>for churches are the people who invoke "separation of church and state" most
>often.  This seems inconsistent:  if giving government the "power to tax" is
>giving government the "power to destroy", then making churches anything other
>than tax-exempt gives the government the "power to destroy" churches, which
>most definitely goes against the idea of separation of church and state.
>[Thomas Newton]

If the "power to tax is the power to destroy", why should the government
have the power to destroy its citizens?  After all, if the government
taxes all of its citizens to death, there won't be anyone to go to church
on Sunday morning (or whenever). :-)

--
The above viewpoints are mine.  They are unrelated to
those of anyone else, including my cat and my employer.

Ken Montgomery  "Shredder-of-hapless-smurfs"
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