No, No, No, No, NO!

So the Ragin' Mrs. and I are doing research on distilling.  In case you don't know, we home-brew.  We make our own wine, mead, and cider.  We got into it partly because the Ragin' Mrs. has an allergy to sulfites, which are found in just about every commercial wine, and partly because we honestly believe that we need to know how to do certain things.  We don't currently do any distilling, because we just don't have the room. 

But part of our research has been of the legal variety, because the last thing I want to do is spend time in jail just because I want to make my own whiskey or vodka.  You can legally brew 200 gallons of wine for your own personal consumption.  I can tell you that I've never come close to brewing 200 gallons, even with brewing year-round, and we give a LOT of mead away to our friends and family.  But home distilling takes you into a whole new level of legalities, and it all revolves around whether or not the government gets its money.  Taxes, baby.  Taxes.

So the Ragin' Mrs. looked up this particular web-page, and read a sentence that she rightly deduced would give me fits:

By making and selling your own moonshine, you may be stealing up to $25 per gallon from taxpayers.

No, no, NO!  Wrong answer! 

Every penny the government takes from us in taxes these days is taken with the threat of force if we do not comply.  In short, the government is STEALING FROM US.  Avoiding the excise taxes associated with booze is NOT stealing from the taxpayers!

This kind of backwards, government-minded thinking would mean that taking a lower-paying job to avoid a higher tax bracket is now somehow "stealing from taxpayers".  Growing your own food and not purchasing it at a store is now "stealing from taxpayers".  Building furniture instead of buying it at a store is now "stealing from taxpayers". 


The mindset expressed at that webpage quite honestly makes me want to vomit.  It is the mindset that thinks of the Government as the master, and the citizens as slaves who exist to fulfill the wishes of their government slave-owners.  It is the mindset that leads to greater government intrusion into our lives.  And it.  Is.  Wrong.

Quite honestly, that's the kind of mindset that makes me want to set up a still, just to piss in the government's Cheerios. 

I suppose that there are various arguments against moonshine out there that are valid, but claiming that it's wrong because the government doesn't get it's cut, when the government is already taxing the holy hell out of everything we touch or earn, is not going to cut it.