Silly me, I was thinking of the $4000 and counting per household it is costing me. I guess I don't have the god-like vision of you and your friend George to see that I am better off without that money to protect myself as I see fit.

You do? Really? Personally I'd rather have an organisation that specialises in defence defend me at least some of the time. Of course, self defence is part of the best strategy for dealing with any threat. With some threats, like muggers, it should probably play a very large role. However, self defence is of limited use against Islamist terrorists and states who sponsor them. If you tried to take out Iran's nuclear facilities on your own you'd almost certainly end up dead very quickly. You need lots of information and either weapons or the economic clout to make economic sanctions against Iran stick. All of this requires a large amount of money and lots of people. The best way to maintain such an organisation is for lots of people who can't provide such defence services to pay people who can: it's called division of labour. Now it would be nice if we currently had a voluntary means to do this, but we don't so we're stuck with doing it through taxation for the immediate future.

You are correct, not everyone sees it as a disater, in fact, I'm sure Mr. bin laden sees it as a success well beyond his wildest dreams!

So you think that bin Laden is glad that he lost a major source of funding and training facilities?