Statist claim: Theft is Compassion

Fallacy:

"There are too many people on the planet that you can just turn away from other people's suffering. It is truly graceless of you to say that you don't want to support Planned Parenthood.

"You are being extremely inappropriate and you are lacking in compassion." (Chris Read)

(The rest involved Taxes Are Use Fees and Using State Services fallacies.)

Response:

Nobody said anything about turning away from suffering (that was purely an appeal to emotion and straw man fallacy). People do not have any right to anyone else's productivity. Remember that pointing out that someone has a right not to help, and not to be forced to help, does not mean that they will not help or don't want to help (see Defense Is Desire).

If you feel that someone else should be helped, you always have a right to reach into your own pockets and help, but not to reach into your neighbor's, or to rob him at gunpoint (Taxation is Extortion).

Theft is not compassion. Giving your own time and money is (or at least may demonstrate) compassion. (DBR)

False Philanthropy and the Seductive Lure of Socialism

Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral selfimprovement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation.

This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.   -   Frederic Bastiat, The Law

Also see: The Humanitarian with the Guillotine by Isabel Paterson