: If one resorts only to manipulating emotions is he not being dishonest?No, playing to emotions isn't per se dishonest, ubnless it is used to disguise a general lack of argument/logic. Appeals to 'values' and associated emotions may be valid, if the logic of such value applies
:"If I have a neighbor who is rich on my right and a neighbor who is poor on my left and I go to the rich neighbor with my gun and say 'give me your money so I can give it to my poor neighbor' our government will show up at my door pretty soon after that with many more guns to take away my gun and throw me in jail."
Just to play devils advocate a second 'them as have the broadest back should bear the biggest burden'-such rich people benefit more from the social system, and thus should pay more for its maintenance. That would be a standard reformist argument.
:Yet our increasingly socialist government does exactly that every single day.
Actually, your government is not socialist (far from it), and Socialists actually believe in the abolition of Taxes (by abolishing money first).
: One might consider socialism to be both the thief and the beggar.
Socialism (pace Dr. Cruel) involves no theft, just a rectification of the on-going theft from the wages system, whereby the workers socially create all the wealth, from which the owners of capital privately benefit/expropriate. Socialism is about teh utter end of expropriation, and everyone working for themselves and their friends/community.
