You write: “That may surprise you, but it is hard for me to be totally comfortable with dropping the age to 18. You see too much of the dark side of gambling when you live here to want teenagers exercising those judgments, new credit cards in pocket. I would not have made good choices at that age.”

It doesn’t surprise me at all. That sort of discomfort is perfectly natural. It’s also unfortunately common for people to try to use their own personal discomfort with someone else’s decisions as a justification for coercing other people into acting in ways that make you feel less personally uncomfortable.

It’s good that you have the self-insight to know that you personally would not have made good choices when you were 18; and you certainly have a right to be concerned for other people’s financial well-being. You should of course feel free to express these concerns to any 18-20 year old who asks for your advice. But 18-20 year olds are, after all, young adults, who are legally and morally responsible for their own financial decisions. What do you think would give you the right to make a decision on the matter for all 18-20 year olds everywhere, and then impose that decision on them with or without their consent, rather than allowing them to make their own decisions — and their own mistakes?

The new movie may, for all I know, be part of the reason for the timing of the close. Every new Star Trek product that comes out actually requires some fairly expensive changes to the attraction, and in particular the large Star Trek future-history timeline that they have between the entrance and the two rides. Prequels are the worst, since they can’t just add more material on the end, but rather must start the whole thing over from scratch in order to add material at the beginning. If they were already thinking about closing the attraction, they may well have decided that they would be unlikely to make up the cost of the rewriting and retconning before the time came to pull the plug.

I’m just glad I got my “Romulan Ale — Legalize It!” t-shirt before they shut down.

This is the text of the communique issued today by a newly-formed activist group, the Southern Nevada Alliance of the Libertarian Left:

This is the first communiqué from the Southern Nevada Alliance of the Libertarian Left.

Today, April 15^th, guerrilla educators affiliated with Southern Nevada ALL struck targets in the streets of southeastern Las Vegas and on the UNLV campus. Flyers—with slogans including Taxes Pay For Torture, Taxes Pay For War, and Your Money Or Your Life,—were raised to reach out to unwilling taxpayers and potential new ALLies, and to raise public consciousness about taxes.

On the filing deadline for 2007’s federal income tax—when countless honest working folks are sick of meddlesome government—when they are tired of being forced to fill out complex forms—and when they are forced to take (on average) 30% of the money that they worked to earn in the previous year and render it as tribute to the United States federal government—against their will, and whether or not they approve of what the government will do with the money—we have a perfect opportunity to spread our message about the violence of government taxation.

Taxes mean violence, both at the point of collection, and at the point of government spending. Collecting taxes is inherently violent because taxpayers are forced to pay the government whether or not they want to, under the threat of government violence. Those who refuse to turn over the money are subjected to government fines, confiscation of their homes and effects, or locked away in prison. It must never be forgotten that anything is funded by taxes could have been funded voluntarily, if enough people could have been convinced to donate the money willingly, or to give it freely in exchange for something that they get in return. In the last analysis, there is no reason to fund a project by taxation unless there is no honest and peaceful way to persuade people to support that project voluntarily. But if there is no honest and peaceful way to fund something, then it should not be funded. Taxation ought to be considered the last resort of the scoundrel and the thug. Morally, there is no difference between tax collection and highway robbery.

But the violence of taxation is even worse than the violence of highway robbery—for while the robber takes your money violently to satisfy his own greed, and then leaves you alone, the tiny handful of people who constitute the the ruling faction of the federal government take your money violently, and thenthey use that money to fund yet more violence — whether by locking nonviolent drug users away in government prisons, or in the form of police brutality, or in the use of torture by government intelligence agencies in the name of “National Security,” or in the form of government wars and occupations. The government’s ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost more than half a trillion dollars, and which cost millions of dollars more with every passing day, and the only reason that this government can afford to continue with their occupation and their bombings, long after the majority of people in the United States have concluded that the wars are hopeless and fundamentally wrong, is that tiny handful of people have the power to force the millions of us who are against these wars to fund them anyway, against our will and in violation of our own conscience. Taxes pay for police brutality. Taxes pay for torture. Taxes paid for Guantanamo. Taxes paid for Abu Ghraib. Taxes pay for war. And when taxes pay for something, what that really means is that unwilling victims, including you and me, are forced to pay for it even if they don’t think that it is worthwhile. Even when they think that it is abhorrent to their own beliefs.

We believe that there is another way. Southern Nevada ALL is working to raise public awareness, and to work towards a new, consensual society, in which no-one will be forced to pay for torture or war, and in which working folks will be able to keep what they have earned, rather than being forced to turn it over to be used at the whim of the violent minority faction known as the United States federal government. We are starting small, and we are starting here, because that is what we have, and this is where we live. We ask that everyone in Southern Nevada who believes in peace, voluntary co-operation, mutual aid, and individual liberty join us in our struggle.

—ALLy C.J., 15 April 2008.

The Southern Nevada Alliance of the Libertarian Left can be reached through its website, sonv.libertarianleft.org, or through its e-mail list ALLSouthernNevada.

These are the flyers that were found posted today on the streets of southeastern Las Vegas:

How Government Works (#1)	How Government Works (#2)
Taxes Pay For Torture (#1)	Taxes Pay For Torture (#2)
Taxes Pay For War (#1)	Taxes Pay For War (#2)
Your Money Or Your Life!	Your Tax Dollars At Work (#1)
Your Tax Dollars At Work (#2)