Your Wikipedia cite brought back memories of undergraduate poli-sci. But the notion that government rests on the consent of the governed is at best a pious asp

Your Wikipedia cite brought back memories of undergraduate poli-sci. But the notion that government rests on the consent of the governed is at best a pious aspiration — or, in the case of the American Declaration of Independence, a polemic — because as the American Revolution itself demonstrated, government rests on the acquiescence of the governed. The brute fact is that there will always be government — and there will always be taxation, because human nature is such that some people won't pay voluntarily if they think they can get away with not doing so (hence my mention above of the free-rider problem).