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I’ve already answered this, but you seem not to have noticed. So I say again, on just taxation see Mises, Human Action, 3rd ed., pp. 280ff. (Rand holds out voluntary taxation only as the final reform. Think of voluntary taxation as "capitalism in its higher phase.")
Re: breaking with history. The very existence of the United States is a radical break with all of previous human history. Here, for the very first time there was a country based on the recognition of individual rights and that the function of government is to secure those rights.
Prior to 1776, slavery or serfdom was the norm practically everywhere, and had been since caveman days. It's true that slavery still existed even in the US. But it was the founding principles of the US that finally put an end to slavery, as Pres. Lincoln stressed.
The material aspects of the US are an equally stupendous break with all of previous history. Based on the recognition of individual rights, greater economic progress has been achieved since 1776 than in the previous hundreds of thousands of years of man's presence on earth.
Just think of the scientific and technological marvels we take for granted, and that are the products of capitalism and its freedom: automobiles, airplanes, air conditioners, indoor plumbing, television sets, personal computers, cell phones, and on and on.
You've heard the expression "smell the roses." I say also "appreciate the products." If there is any historical figure from before 1776 who is a hero to you, imagine that he could somehow come forward to the present and was sitting next to you, in the passenger seat ot your car.
Your job would be to serve as his guide on a tour of the modern world. Think how overwhelmed he would be just by the drive in your automobile. A miraculous machine, incredibly comfortable, capable of driving stupendous distances, at incredible speeds, while accompanied by music.
It would be like your entering a spaceship to go to another galaxy.
I know there are some people who feel contempt for our marvelous products and are ready to dismiss them as actually harmful for allegedly causing “global warming,” as though they’d even be alive in the first place if not for modern technology.
Even if there were global warming to such an extent that over the next thousand years, sea levels rose to the point that major coastal areas disappeared, we would be able to cope with it, thanks precisely to our wonderful machines and equipment fueled by man-made power.
The United States and its material civilization are in grave danger from support for attempting to manipulate climate by means of destroying industrial civilization. (This would be the result of prohibiting fossil fuels in addition to atomic power.)
The whole human race is to be formed into a gigantic collective whose massive material sacrifices will allegedly stop global warming, just as in prehistoric times the sacrifice of all first-born children may have been thought to accomplish some desired result.
Today’s intellectuals and their programs of sacrifice are the heirs of the witchdoctors of prehistoric times.
And when they tell us the lie that we must sacrifice industrial civilization to “save the planet,” let us answer “F**K the planet. We’ll keep and intensify industrial civilization because only that will enable us to have a planet worth living on.”
