Taxation is theft.

The government has a monopoly of force, and uses it to extort money from the people.

We complain about it, but we are not anarchists. We know there must be a government, and that it needs money to do its job.

If it only did what only government can do, protect our liberty and property essential to our liberty from domestic crime and foreign invasion, and nothing more, we would not grudge parting with some of our money to pay for that necessary service.

But even the best governments use the people’s money for superfluous ends. They give it to foreign countries! They squander it on art and sport and … The list of unnecessary, and even  positively wicked, recipients of government largesse is very long.

Plainly, the less government does, the better. The less tax it extorts from the people, the better.

So it is very good that a tax-reducing bill has been passed in both the House and the Senate.

President Trump – who promised tax cuts – will sign it, and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will be law. (Here are its details and professional analysis of it.)

It is also an achievement of the Republican Party – not easily won, but finally won.

No Democrat voted for it. Theirs is the party of high taxation for big government, low growth, high unemployment, more dependence on government, less self-determination.

But we doubt if there is one of them (except the extremely rich among them because they aren’t getting a reduction, such as House minority leader Nancy Pelosi) who is not secretly glad he’ll be paying less tax.

They are also, as we often repeat, the Hypocrite Party.