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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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Republicans love the free market. They hate socialism and big government. Conservative southern Republicans are some of the most vocal about cutting the size of government and cutting federal subsidies. It’s a pity they don’t really mean their rhetoric.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration proposed one of the few things it’s ever proposed that I thought was a great idea. Included in the 2014 budget is a plan to sell the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) so it will be a private utility instead of a government monopoly. That would shrink the size of government and cut out subsidies for millions of people in the South who are getting electricity at cheap rates.

Republicans should have been cheering this great news. TVA is the country’s largest electric utility. Selling it would be a perfect demonstration of what Republicans have been talking about for years. GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater proposed in 1964 that TVA be privatized (and he lost Tennessee as a result). So how did modern Republican stalwarts against big government react?

In Alabama, U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby and U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks both reacted negatively. Shelby didn’t outright dismiss the plan, but anyone who can read through political language knows what his statement means.

“I intend to carefully study any proposals to restructure TVA to ensure that it continues to deliver affordable electricity throughout the region without continuing to add to our nation’s rapidly growing debt,” Shelby told the Huntsville Times.

Brooks told the times that he’s willing to study the proposal, but, “Quite frankly, I am skeptical the president can make that case.”

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