David McElroy

When Meg’s twin sister sprained her ankle over the weekend, Meg suddenly found herself without a playmate on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in West Virginia. So this cute 7-year-old decided to sit on the front porch of the farmhouse where she lives and color — and this is what she came up with. (Click the picture to see it full size.)

She calls it The Rainbow Shop. She gives her creations away to whoever wants them. You’ll notice her sign says, “It’s Free,” as well as, “You don’t have to spend money.” Her mom told me Monday afternoon that it was Meg’s way of coming up with something to do on a day when she would have normally been running and playing with her sister, but it was also because, “I guess she thought her sister could use some cheering up, too.”

We live in a very screwed-up world. You don’t have to look very far to notice that, especially on a day such as today, when the news is full of grim reports from the explosions at the Boston Marathon.

But don’t let yourself be dragged into negativity by thinking that’s all the world is. There’s beauty, creativity and opportunity all around you, right in the midst of disaster, pain and ugliness.

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When you file a tax return, you’re a victim of armed robbery. Although a dishonest politician such as U.S. Sen. Harry Reid can claim that filing a tax return is voluntary, we all know that men with guns will eventually pursue us if we decline to hand over our money. So filing a return and paying taxes are about as voluntary as it is to hand over your money when a mugger pulls a gun on you.

The late libertarian economist Murray Rothbard, above, cut straight to the heart of the matter — and it’s something everybody ought to be thinking about today.

“Completing your own income tax return is something like a do-it-yourself mugging,” Rothbard said.

I can’t add much here to what I’ve said about taxes before, so I’m going to keep this brief. But I’m going to suggest you take a look at what I’ve said about taxation before. I see it as a moral issue. We didn’t agree to any so-called “social contract.” We didn’t agree to obey whoever won elections. It’s theft when those people take our money. And we’ve been socialized to accept the theft as legitimate.

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When I first saw Shelby, I thought she was going to be asking for money. She had the look of a desperate person. I was right and I was wrong. She was desperate, but it wasn’t money she needed.

I was sitting alone with my laptop at a fast food restaurant in downtown Trussville Friday afternoon. There was almost nobody else in the place, so I didn’t notice when she came in. I was sitting in a quiet corner, but she approached me and asked if I could help her.

She had cuts and bruises on her face. (Or some kind of wounds.) She wore sloppy and dirty clothes. She wasn’t wearing makeup. She looked desperate.

Instead of asking for money, she told me that she had been in an auto accident on I-59 earlier. A friend of hers who works about two blocks from where we were had gone to the site of the wreck, but he had to return to work, so he dropped her off at Hardee’s. She had a phone that belonged to someone else and its battery was about dead. She said she had been calling to find friends who would come pick her up, but nobody would agree to come.

She said her mother lives about 10 miles away in a part of town called Center Point. It’s a declining part of the area and I almost never go there. She said her mother had her two children there, but her mother had no car to pick her up. She wanted me to get her at least close to the area. She said she thought she could talk friends into picking her up if they just had to drive a few blocks instead of 10 miles.

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