The thugs with the guns of course. That is what you are if you support the government and its continued confiscation of the productive efforts of individuals.

Chairman Max Baucus’s bill includes the so-called individual mandate, along with what he calls a $1,900 “excise tax” if you don’t buy health insurance. (It had been as much as $3,800 but Democrats reduced the amount last week to minimize the political sticker shock.) And, lo, it turns out that if you don’t pay that tax, the IRS could punish you with a $25,000 fine or up to a year in jail, or both.

Under questioning last week, Tom Barthold, the chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, admitted that the individual mandate would become a part of the Internal Revenue Code and that failing to comply “could be criminal, yes, if it were considered an attempt to defraud.” Mr. Barthold noted in a follow-up letter that the willful failure to file would be a simple misdemeanor, punishable by the $25,000 fine or jail time under Section 7203.

So failure to pay the mandate would be enforced like tax evasion, but Mr. Obama still claims it isn’t a tax. “You can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase,” Mr. Obama insisted last week to ABC interviewer George Stephanopoulos. Accusing critics of dishonesty is becoming this President’s default argument, but is Mr. Barthold also part of the plot?

At least the IRS is honest. Avoid the health care tax once, incur a $25,000 fine. Avoid it twice, go to jail. Remind me where in the social contract I signed up for that? Oh, right, I didn’t.

I’d remind you gun toting thugs that when you confiscate my income to redistribute to the less fortunate that is not charity, but something else.When I volunteer my own time and resources to help the less fortunate, that is charitable and none of your business.

I’d remind you gun toting thugs that when you confiscate my income to redistribute to the entrenched corporate fat-cats who have bought you off 9 ways to Sunday, that is not economic policy but taking from the less well-off to give to the rich, it is special privilege writ large.

I’ll remind you gun toting thugs that when you confiscate my income to support massive inefficient public works projects, you are taking food from the mouths of hungry citizens who otherwise would have enjoyed the bounties of productive activities.

I’ll remind you gun toting thugs that when you confiscate my income to build and run public schools that you enrich an entrenched bureaucracy that has little interest in educating my children, and you make it harder for productive individuals to make schooling choices for their own children.

Who is it that is clinging to their guns and religion again?

In my worldview, that of a free society of freely associating individuals, I do not permit the confiscation or invasion of others’ property. In yours, it is a virtue, and done at the point of a gun. In my worldview, that of a free society of freely associating individuals, I allow you to form your own little collectivist societies, so long as you don’t force me into it. In yours, it is a virtue to force me to live contrary to the way I wish to live. In my worldview, everyone responds to incentives, everyone is self-interested, and nobody is omniscient enough to run the lives of others. In your worldview, people can be molded like clay, made to move like chess pieces, and everyone should love one another enough to make sure they produce enough for each other – so what if you need a gun to make your vision a reality.

What was that about religion and guns again? You have no moral authority. None. Until you put the gun down.