Posted on 04/12/2007 7:28:36 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
Thanks to our nation's income tax system, individual Americans are not free--they are literally on parole.
If they fail to show up at the designated time and place to testify against themselves, they face the prospect that their material goods will be confiscated and their bodies seized and imprisoned. All this because they are guilty of the crime of doing what the most fundamental law of nature gives them the right to do--procure the means of preserving themselves and their loved ones.
A dilemma
Every year around this time, I find myself in a great quandary, a struggle between my sense of obedience to law and my sense of principle. The reason: it's time to file an income tax return.
Don't get me wrong. I have no trouble with the logic that effective government requires some form of taxation. What I can't understand is how we reconcile the clear provisions of our Constitution with the demand that every citizen testify under oath as to the amount of income they have earned in the previous year.
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that "No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The common understanding is that every American must file an income tax return or be prosecuted for the failure to do so.
Yet, it also appears to be the case that the contents of the return can be used in evidence against us if and when we are prosecuted for tax evasion or other income tax related crimes, including perjury, if we do not scrupulously comply with the letter of the voluminous tax code.
If filing is compulsory, we are being forced to provide testimony that may be used in evidence against us. This means that we are compelled to bear witness against ourselves, which the Constitution plainly forbids.
On the other hand, those who support the use of the income tax return will say that it does not violate the Fifth Amendment because filing the return is a voluntary act. But if this were truly the case, how could anyone be prosecuted for failure to file a tax return? Prosecution brings the force of law against the individual. Acts performed under the threat of prosecution are therefore not voluntary acts, but acts done under the threat of force.
Shallow legal arguments
I'm sure that the self-interested representatives of the legal profession will spring forward to assure me that the Courts have accepted the validity of the income tax system and cooperated with its enforcement mechanisms (by sanctioning the coercion used to enforce compliance). But we all know that this offers no assurance of constitutionality.
The Courts do not reliably represent the rule of law, since they willfully ignore the plain provisions of the Constitution that is the Supreme Law of the Land and the source of all their legitimate governmental power. The Courts blithely fabricate and impose requirements that are nowhere found in the Constitution (such as the separation of Church and state) and demand respect for rights that contradict its principles and stated purpose (like the so-called right to abortion).
Given this dismal track record, it's not at all hard to believe that they would cooperate in the imposition of an income tax regime that contradicts the Constitution's plainly worded guarantee against self-incrimination.
Respect for law
If we assume for a moment that the income tax regime is enforced by means that systematically disregard one of the most basic guarantees against governmental abuse of individuals, we realize that it puts conscientious citizens in a terrible position. If they choose to cooperate, they lend credence to the abuse--so that over the course of generations, people become more and more inured to it, and ignorant of the abrogation of right that it represents. Since habitual deference to law enforcement is the only basis for the filing requirement, such deference becomes the source of government authority, rather than the plainly declared and duly ratified will of the people expressed in the Constitution.
Habitual deference to the perceived force of law is far from being characteristic of a free people. Indeed, it is the reason large masses of people in every region of the world submitted to despotism and arbitrary tyranny in the centuries before the influence of Christianity led thinkers to articulate the doctrine of God-given inalienable rights.
We must be careful, of course, to keep in mind the distinction between habitual deference to the force of law and the habit of respect for the law. The first is quite simply the product of fear, the second is the fruit of good civic education.
Courts and all the trappings of so-called law are no strangers to tyranny. They have more often been its tools and servants than its enemies. The preponderance of human history offers examples of tyrannical and unjust regimes that cowed the masses into submission using handy symbols of power to shackle the mind, reinforced by the routine application of brute force.
Constitutional self-government is supposed to achieve respect for law on a very different basis, one that commands obedience on account of the assurance that the transcendent principles of right and justice will be respected in both the substance of the law and the procedures that enforce it.
The issue
Here then is the question: If the administration of the income tax departs from the principles of right and justice plainly set forth in the Constitution, does our cooperation with the income tax regime constitute and encourage the habitual deference to force without respect for right that has been a key support for sustaining tyrannical and unjust government? Does our willingness to cooperate help to shackle the mind and will of our children and of future generations, corrupting their understanding so that they will no longer recognize the distinction between legitimate government by law, and government by force masked with the handy symbols of law?
If we truly care about liberty--which is to say, constitutional self-government based upon respect for our God-given inalienable rights--are we obliged to cease this cooperation, even as, in the founding generation of our country, people ceased to cooperate with a system of taxation that contradicted those rights?
This challenge might be less urgent if the issue involved were not so critical to the material foundations of liberty. The American founders repeatedly alluded to Blackstone's pithy dictum: The power to tax is the power to destroy. How much more so when the mechanism of taxation itself involves the destruction of one of the most vital protections against governmental abuse of the individual: the protection against self-incrimination.
The income tax gives the government the power to attack or manipulate the material resource base of the whole people, determining what share will be controlled by the government and what will be left to the discretion of individuals. It also places every individual under a requirement to reveal to the government the sources of their individual sustenance, knowledge that could be used to attack or sever these lines of supply at will. It places every individual under a reporting requirement which, aside from being incompatible with the Fifth Amendment, can at any time become the basis for embroiling the individual in legal and bureaucratic challenges that consume their time and resources in ways that can threaten their own survival and that of the family and friends who rely on them.
By contrast, Montesquieu defined liberty as the ability to live without fear that others could assault your life, In our society, livelihood is life. Franklin Roosevelt appeared to agree when he cited freedom from fear among the four freedoms for which we did battle during the Second World War. Under our system of constitutional self-government, legitimate power means power consistent with liberty. The provisions of the Constitution aim to secure liberty by establishing a government whose powers are limited by respect for the Constitution's principles and requirements.
Free-market alternative
I admit that we would face an insoluble dilemma if the income tax were the only form of taxation capable of funding our government effectively. If this were so, it would mean that republican government consistent with the U.S. Constitution and its principles is impossible. The best we could hope for would be some less evil form of tyranny.
However, the success of the free enterprise economy made possible by respect for liberty means the existence of a huge marketplace, whose transactions generate an enormous exchange of goods and services. A system of taxation that imposed a modest toll (retail sales tax) on every such open and public exchange in the marketplace would more than suffice to fund the government, without the need to threaten the livelihood or constitutional right of any citizen. In the normal course of their voluntary business and other economic affairs, people would pay for government services, just as they pay for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and entertainment.
If we care any longer to preserve the substance of democratic self-government, we need urgently to develop and put in place the free-market alternative to the liberty-destroying income tax system now in place. If we fail to do so, we leave the people, as individuals and as a whole, defenseless against the strategies of self-righteous, power-hungry elites who are already manipulating its administration to isolate and demoralize our people, crushing both their individual spirit and their ability to associate effectively for political action.
All laws are not "do such and such or else".
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Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
The Federalist No. 32
yet I am willing here to allow, in its full extent, the justness of the reasoning which requires that the individual States should possess an independent and uncontrollable authority to raise their own revenues for the supply of their own wants. And making this concession, I affirm that (with the sole exception of duties on imports and exports) they would, under the plan of the convention, retain that authority in the most absolute and unqualified sense; and that an attempt on the part of the national government to abridge them in the exercise of it, would be a violent assumption of power, unwarranted by any article or clause of its Constitution.
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As GovernmentShrinker said in post #44;
The taxes needed to run the federal government should be collected directly from state governments, with each state’s percentage based on how many members it has in the House of Representatives.
This follows constitutional intent, at least according to Alexander Hamilton:
The Federalist No. 36
Let it be recollected that the proportion of these taxes is not to be left to the discretion of the national legislature, but is to be determined by the numbers of each State, as described in the second section of the first article. An actual census or enumeration of the people must furnish the rule, a circumstance which effectually shuts the door to partiality or oppression. The abuse of this power of taxation seems to have been provided against with guarded circumspection. In addition to the precaution just mentioned, there is a provision that "all duties, imposts, and excises shall be UNIFORM throughout the United States."
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The federal government is authorized to lay duties on consumables as the enter or leave the country, but the taxes at these points must be uniform in every State.
This doesn't even mean the federal government actually collects the tax. At the point of entry/exit, the state and federal government have whats called 'concurrent jurisdiction' and the state collects the tax on behalf of the federal government.
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Taxes that are collected on real property, or real estate, are considered the income of the State, with a portion forwarded to the federal government by the parties to the Compact.
§ 947. In a general sense, all contributions imposed by the government upon individuals for the service of the state, are called taxes, by whatever name they may be known, whether by the name of tribute, tythe, talliage, impost, duty, gabel, custom, subsidy, aid, supply, excise, or other name. In this sense, they are usually divided into two great classes, those, which are direct, and those, which are indirect. Under the former denomination are included taxes on land, or real property, and under the latter, taxes on articles of consumption. The constitution, by giving the power to lay and collect taxes in general terms, doubtless meant to include all sorts of taxes, whether direct or indirect. But, it may be asked, if such was the intention, why were the subsequent words, duties, imposts and excises, added in the clause? Two reasons may be suggested; the first, that it was done to avoid all possibility of doubt in the construction of the clause, since, in common parlance, the word taxes is sometimes applied in contradistinction to duties, imposts, and excises, and, in the delegation of so vital a power, it was desirable to avoid all possible misconception of this sort; and, accordingly, we find, in the very first draft of the constitution, these explanatory words are added. Another reason was, that the constitution prescribed different rules of laying taxes in different cases, and, therefore, it was indispensable to make a discrimination between the classes, to which each rule was meant to apply.
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution
Yes, those chains are just dragging me down! But I'm sure you have really done much to move the Fair Tax or some other such proposal along? Most of the bellyachers here on FR that complain the loudest about an issue, whether it is taxes, cigarette bans, Terri Schiavo, etc, have done absolutely nothing about the issue...but bellyache.
But I'll tell you what. If you believe the argument in your post, then do not file a return this year. Do not pay any taxes, and when they come for you, claim it is simply a violation of your 5th Amendment rights.
And keep us posted!
Bingo! Yes, there are better ways of funding the government, but I, as in me, have no desire to put any effort into changing it. If a bill is introduced that actually makes it out of a first reading, I will look at it and make comments to my elected representative on its pros and cons, as I have done with the Fair Tax bills.
In the meantime, I'm far more concerned with the 2008 election, the war on terror, and balancing the budget.
I’ll have to study your argument further later. Have to head out for a meeting...
You're now being dishonest, since neither I, nor the writer of the article, argued any such thing.
I've been a vocal proponent for the elimination of the federal income tax for over fifteen years, all over the country. And, as an aside, I spent many weeks in FL doing all I could to try and save the life of Terri Schiavo from her judicial executioners.
Your doing great as adebate moderator. :)
I look forward to your response. Keep up the good work!
But, it may be asked, if such was the intention, why were the subsequent words, duties, imposts and excises, added in the clause? Two reasons may be suggested; the first, that it was done to avoid all possibility of doubt in the construction of the clause, since, in common parlance, the word taxes is sometimes applied in contradistinction to duties, imposts, and excises, and, in the delegation of so vital a power, it was desirable to avoid all possible misconception of this sort; and, accordingly, we find, in the very first draft of the constitution, these explanatory words are added.
Well posted!
In fact, I never go after a poster until they first make a personal attack on me. Then the gloves are off. Some, like you apparently, have absolutely no interest in the thread itself, but simply want to start a fight. That seems to be the limit of your capacity.
Your incompetence caused you to be in error. Then when I point out that error to you, you have the gall to turn it on me. You're compounding your error. But hey, that's your problem -- not mine. Deal with it. Or don't. It makes no difference to me.
You are either just a young kid or you do need help. Think for a minute just how important that was. The argument, not the author was at issue. I mistakenly thought the author was the poster. So what? He corrected me, but the arguments did not change because Keyes wrote it rather than the poster. It certainly didn't do much for my opinion of Keyes, but that's another issue.
Posters such as you are a dime a dozen. I see them on threads where their response to a well thought out post was to criticize the failure to use spell check, or some other meaningless error having nothing at all to do with the thread.
I'll try again. Do you have anything of substance on the issues we have been discussing?
Actually, I think you're just trolling.
Brilliant response! It keeps you from having to answer the question.
Thanks! :-)
I'm researching to see if I can find any applicable comments by Rawle, Kent or Tucker as well.
I don't think I'd have a problem answering that one. A small business owner would of course, have to file indicating how much his sales were and how much he had collected in taxes, just as he does now.
And attached to the purchase of the land by the city for a park will be a hundred laws on its use by citizens, such as leash laws, dog poop laws, smoking restrictions, drinking restrictions, trash restrictions, time restrictions and other use restrictions, all laws that are "do such and such or else", on land designed for the citizenry.
And as for your holiday, if you are a business owner, you will likely have laws pertaining to your employees' pay that you will need to follow.
You are both arguing the unconstitutionality of the requirement to file a return as being compulsory self incrimination. You have complained bitterly about the loss of liberty and even the unalienable right to not pay the income tax. And you complain that I'm lazy because I accept the tax even though I don't much care for it. Yet I've seen nothing you have written so far indicating exactly what you are doing about it...but complaining. I merely gave you a suggestion.
Very interesting, thanks for the ping! Reminds me of something I gotta do this weekend. I can hardly contain the excitement.
Some, like you apparently, have absolutely no interest in the thread itself, but simply want to start a fight. That seems to be the limit of your capacity.
Highlighting your errors and watching how you deal with it is important. You have chosen poorly. With other, fundamentally honest posters on this thread I have discussed the issue of inalienable right to life, liberty and happiness. For example, post 99 which sates:
"The inalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is freedom from the initiation of force, fraud and coercion. Prohibition of initiation of force, fraud and coercion respects and protects the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." -- Zon
When you act as you have, you've done anything but earn respect that is deserving of debate. I will not gloss over your error and compounding of it and just move on along to debate you on the issue of this thread. You simply have not earned the respect. Actually, just the opposite -- you have earned disrespect.
You are either just a young kid or you do need help.
I'm not a kid. I'm doing just fine holding your feet to the fire by not letting you get away with implying -- in what appears to be an insults -- how much more intellectually adept you are compared to many Freepers, when in fact, in the span of just a few posts you've proven the opposite.
Think for a minute just how important that was. The argument, not the author was at issue. I mistakenly thought the author was the poster. So what? He corrected me, but the arguments did not change because Keyes wrote it rather than the poster. It certainly didn't do much for my opinion of Keyes, but that's another issue.
I see you don't think having your credibility at stake is important. I see you don't think earning the respect to be deemed worthy of debate is important to you. You think I should just gloss over your errors? Why should I care about you when you clearly don't care about your own integrity?
Posters such as you are a dime a dozen. I see them on threads where their response to a well thought out post was to criticize the failure to use spell check, or some other meaningless error having nothing at all to do with the thread.
That's an obfuscating, non sequitur straw man.
I'll try again. Do you have anything of substance on the issues we have been discussing?
Again, why should I respect you when you don't have the integrity to respect yourself?
But what have you actually done to change it? As for Terri, other than as a participant in the protest group, what laws have you or any of the other Terri protesters had changed? In Florida, what laws were changed because of Terri? What judicial procedures were changed? Did you go to the legislature or to the AG in Florida to get the laws changed or the issues removed from probate judges?
If you've done these things, then wonderful. But I can tell you that most of the vocal folks on the Terri threads have done absolutely nothing, because I tend to ask that question and am usually met by silence.
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