Most liberals don't like guns. In fact, it is probably fair to say that most liberals eschew violence in all its forms. That means no capital punishment, no boxing matches, no torturing information out of terrorists, no shooting bad guys who break into my house, no murdering trees with a chainsaw, and no killing critters, especially if all you are going to do is skin 'em and keep the hide. Oh yeah, and no nuclear weapons.

Some liberals, the more consistent ones, even go so far as to not eat meat and not wear leather shoes, because animals have a right not to be eaten or worn by us humans.

Okay, I get it. But I have one question for all you anti-gun, anti-violence liberals. Why is it, if I don't pay my taxes, you want to send gun toting government agent out to my property to physically take my house away from me?

Please allow me to explore that a bit. Let's say some conservative doesn't believe in property taxes and thinks he has a right to really own a piece of property without paying rent to the government to keep it. That's not such a novel concept, you know. A lot of people feel that way.

I am just speaking figuratively here, but let's say the sheriff comes out to kick this non taxpaying conservative out of his house and forgets to bring his firearm, or better yet, announces that he will not resort to violence to enforce the law. If that happened, there's a good chance the conservative, non taxpaying property owner would keep his house and tell the sheriff to go pound sand.

What's the poor sheriff going to do if the property owner tells him to go pound sand? Go back to the office and get some more deputies? What good would that do? A homeowner with a hunting rifle or a shotgun and a box of buckshot wouldn't have much problem protecting his property from a bunch of unarmed deputies. Therein lies the problem.

The only way the sheriff is going to collect all that money you nonviolent liberals need to finance all those feel-good programs you and you public employee union friends can't live without is to resort to violence.

You know, it all seems to boil down to this: The entire government machine is based on force or the threat of violence. If I don't pay my property taxes, the government sends out a bunch of guys with guns to kick me out of my house. If I don't claim all of my income on my "voluntary" federal income tax return, then you send out the guys with guns to put me in jail for tax evasion

Okay, I guess I understand now. No violence. No guns, except if the government needs them to make us pay our taxes. It goes without saying, of course, that government agents cannot merely have guns in their possession when they come out to a non taxpaying citizen's house to kick him out. They have to have the authority to use their weapons and in fact be willing to use them. This means of course that the government officials you send out are not all that likely to be gun hating, antiviolence liberal types.

I thought I had this figured out, but now I see that I am hopelessly confused. Big government, anti violence liberals need money to fund all their do good programs, so they send gun toting conservatives out to peoples' houses to make them pay up. Sounds kind of hypocritical to me; more hypocritical than eating hamburgers and wearing leather booties.

I know it was a long time ago, but maybe George Washington was on to something when he said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

He could have added: Even wimpy, gun hating, nonviolent liberals can make you do things you don't want to do, if they have the power of government behind them. So don't let government get too big or make lots of rules you don't want, because every one of those rules will be enforced by the barrel of a gun. That's what government does.

Bill Sizemore is president of the Oregon Taxpayers Union and a former Republican nominee for Governor of Oregon.

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