All of that may be true. I would still argue that people have the right to participate in such a system if they choose, and other people have the right to make whatever conclusions off of it that they think are warranted.

If I'm reading this right, the word GIF has been around a long time, but it is "word of the year" because of the new usage, as a verb. I've never heard this usage, and I can't for the life of me figure out what it could mean. Does "to gif" mean "to convert an image to GIF format"? Does it mean "to capture an image in GIF format"? Neither one of these sounds like something that would be a very common usage, so I'm sure I'm missing something. What does this new verb mean?

If China can use the dollar, then seceded Texans can use the dollar if they want to. I would imagine they wouldn't want to. And I would hope the law would be like early America, where people used whatever other people would accept, and currencies could compete (and therefore held their value). In those days, most people used the Spanish milled peso, Spain's answer to the Thaler coin. Both Thalers and pesos were about an ounce of silver. The Thaler name gave rise to "dollar."

Personally, I'd rather see seceded Texans use silver ounce coins, but I'd want them to be able to make up their own individual minds.

You've got me wrong. I'm a Texan who wants to secede, but my policy would be open immigration: you can come from anywhere, so long as you buy or rent a place to stay, or get permission to stay with someone else. I'm for a much more liberal immigration policy, and I welcome a fusion of American+Texan+Mexican culture.

Conquest is immoral and doesn't provide any legitimate claim. I hope you stand with me in opposing it.

That's an inalienable right, actually.

You are a tyrant.

Great, but I think there's another way to get those, and I don't consent to you building them at my expense.

To me there's nothing different between that and a religious belief. You think you know what's best for me, and you believe you are justified in forcing it on me. I think that's every bit as immoral as making me attend or support a government-linked church.

No, please abandon your illegitimate claim over my life, body, and property. Just because you think you know what's right for me doesn't give you the right to make me cooperate.

I don't agree that my presence within a boundary drawn by other people constitutes consent. I'm in a spot that your government claims, but the claim is not legitimate and does not rest on any legitimate principle that makes it "theirs" and not "mine." I don't consent. I agree with you as far as raising children, but your analogy fails because I am not in your house. I am in my house. You and I did not partner together to buy two houses and form an association where we each have some say in what goes on in each other's houses.

I'm glad to hear that. Then my decision ought to be praised, as well as my efforts to persuade others to also withdraw their consent.

I wish. If you think being blue in a red state, or red in a blue state is hard, try being the guy who doesn't raise his hand at the office when the VP says "So, who voted today?"

It essentially already is. But there's some faint hope if we can get a critical mass of people to believe in everybody having the freedom to withdraw consent, and nobody having the right to force others to say pledges, fund wars they don't believe in, adhere to religious principles they don't believe in, etc.

I am lobbying to change it. I am appealing to you, and every other member of the public, to stop forcing your will on me. In exchange, I will not force my will on you. I won't force you to support wars you do not believe in, won't force you to abstain from drugs unless you believe in abstaining from them, won't force religion or any other belief on you, won't prohibit you from marrying anyone you choose of any gender (so long as they consent), etc.

Leave? Why should I leave? This spot is mine. Not yours. That's my whole point.

It is my land. I paid for it and bought it from its owner. The government does not own our land any more than it owns our bodies. It doesn't own any of our property. But it does lay claim to all of the above, and that is stealing.

What would be right would be for your government to get off of my land. I'll make you a deal: you guys stay off my land, and I'll stay out of your lives, won't make you pay for any wars I believe in, won't make you support my church financially, won't stop you from using drugs if you choose, will stay out of your womb (if applicable), etc.

I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and I don't consent to this system. I've heard most of the arguments for it, and I don't agree. You haven't persuaded me, and I don't consent. It's fine with me if the rest of you live under whatever system you like, but I don't think you should be allowed to get your way at the expense of the rest of us.

Anyway, when the other guys wins, don't complain to me for the next four years, all right? You agreed to live under this crazy majority rule system. I did not.

They were all bad guys if you ask me.

No thanks. I have no quarrel. My foes are the people in the institution that pressed my ancestors into service for war and stole their income to support war.

Sorry about that, but I do not consent. Throwing bad money after good is never a good idea, and when it's used as encouragement to warfare, the idea is downright reprehensible.

Wrong. There are plenty of published and peer reviewed studies that do show injury, such as adjuvant induced autoimmune diseases. There are also issues of ineffectiveness, bad batches, etc. and things like serotype replacement where bugs mutate into something even worse. We know of several events in history where vaccines HAVE directly caused harm, such as the polio outbreak in Nigeria that was directly caused by the oral polio vaccine and the swine flu vaccine that caused GBS. It's also a widely accepted fact that for a very small portion of population, there will be significant adverse reaction. It's not universal that all vaccines are good, safe and infallible; you can't lump them all together in one basket.

Now, I'm definitely not arguing that all vaccines are ineffective either and agree the anti-vax crew do have a lot of crazy theories that are unproven or anecdotal (including some comments made by the OP). But on both sides of the vaccine debate there is a lot of misinformation. And the problem IMO is that there should be NO area of science where we're not constantly evaluating, but for some reason, this is one of the only areas where questions do not seem to be allowed. Instead of people showing why you're wrong, they yell at you for even asking questions. I've experienced this firsthand on many occasions.

You knew by posting this here you were going to get slammed, right? When it comes to vaccines, the scientific minded community does not allow any room for criticism, doubt or deviation from their position that all vaccines are a godsend and beyond reproach. Doubts and skepticism are at the core of the scientific movement-- except when it comes to this issue. Instead you're just called a conspiracy theorist and a nut.