Valid: each conclusion logically follows from the premises.
Sound: the premises are true.

What Socrates was good at was making premises that sound true but aren't necessarily so. The same is true of the above argument. The premises are not true. It's valid, but not sound. Taxation is not violence. That's the most irritatingly antagonistic and obtuse statement I've heard all week.

Last word I'm gonna put in on the subject, at the risk of derailing the thread: taking a viewpoint to one extreme or another tends to be a bad thing. Not that I'm for raising taxes, but our society could not function as we know it without them, and calling taxes a form of violent oppression is just exactly the same kind of extremist fear-mongering that Glenn Beck is so good at.


Now: Keep the fucking political discussions out of qfr, kthx.