Posted on 01/30/2004 12:52:00 PM PST by .cnI redruM
Columnists Paul Craig Roberts begins a recent column with a criticism of the income tax -- something that certainly could be criticized -- but then says (emphasis added):
Compare an American taxpayer's situation today with that of a 19th century American slave. Not all slaves worked on cotton plantations. Some with marketable skills were leased to businesses or released to labor markets, where they worked for money wages. Just like the wages of today's taxpayer, a portion of the slave's money wages was withheld. In those days the private owner, not the government, received the withheld portion of the slave's wages.
Slaves in that situation were as free as today's American taxpayer to choose their housing from the available stock, purchase their food and clothing, and entertain themselves.
In fact, they were freer than today's American taxpayer. By hard work and thrift, they could save enough to purchase their freedom.
No American today can purchase his freedom from the IRS.
Slaves could also run away. Today, Americans who run away are pursued to the far ends of the earth. Indeed, the IRS can assert its ownership rights for years after an American gives up his citizenship and becomes a citizen of a different country. The IRS need only claim that the former American gave up his citizenship for tax reasons.
Conspicuously omitted from the comparison: Pre-Civil-War slaves could be sold by their masters. The masters could sell one's spouse, or one's children, and you might never see them again. The masters could sell one's daughters into prostitution. In some states, it was illegal for slaves to be educated. Slaves naturally didn't have constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech. Masters could, to the best of my knowledge, engage in a broad range of corporal punishment (all of course without any requirement of due process). The masters surely could try to stop slaves from running away, and to my knowledge many slaves were murdered while trying away. Need I go on?
Seriously, would any of you trade your modern status, even with high income taxes, for being a slave in the 1850 South, even a favored one such as the sort Roberts describes? Hey, I'm a big believer in economic liberty, which too many people wrongly devalue. But it's ridiculous moral blindness to overvalue it, and to undervalue the panoply of other liberties that we as free men have and that Southern slaves did not. "In fact, [certain pre-1860 American slaves] were freer than today's American taxpayer" is just an appalling statement to make.
Oh, and here's the crowning touch, from later in the column:
The "Civil Rights revolution" destroyed equality before the law. Today rights are race-and gender-based. We have resurrected the status-based rights of feudalism. The new privileges belong to "preferred minorities" rather than noble families.
Readers of the blog know that I'm happy to complain about ways in which civil rights laws (and other laws) restrict liberty, or erode equality. But saying that "The 'Civil Rights revolution' destroyed equality" and that "Today rights are race- and gender-based" suggests that somehow before the 1960s we had more equality and didn't have race- and gender-based rights.
Jim Crow; segregated schools; legal prohibitions on women working in various jobs; government tolerance of race-based lynchings; routine discrimination against nonwhites and women in a vast range of government jobs; systematic police abuse of blacks -- all that somehow didn't involve inequality before the law or "race- and gender-based" rights. But set up race- and sex-based affirmative action (which, I stress again, I oppose) and other aspects of modern civil rights laws; now, all of a sudden (even though women and racial minorities have more nearly equal opportunities with men and whites than they've ever had in American history) that's "destroy[ing]" some preexisting equality. What sort of moral and practical blindness is this?
This, of course, is the man who wrote in the Washington Times and in his TownHall.com columns that (all emphasis added):
"Recently, a federal judge wrote to me. . . . He was astounded that among almost 100 new citizens [for whom he had conducted a naturalization ceremony], there were only four or five Europeans. Immigration policy has produced an extraordinary change in the ethnic composition of the U.S. population. Experts tell me that it has been three decades since Europeans comprised a significant percentage of new citizens. In 1965, the Democrats, who lost the South, changed the immigration rules in order to build African, Asian, and Hispanic constituencies that would vote Democratic. In effect, native-born U.S. citizens are being "ethnically cleansed," not by violence, but by their own immigration policy. . . . When I first came to Washington, D.C., 25 years ago, the only international-looking people one saw were in the diplomatic community. Now, it is every third person."
As I've argued, "international-looking" is presumably the antonym of "American-looking people," but what exactly does that mean? I assume that it refers to the non-European, "African, Asian and Hispanic"-looking people (what else can it be referring to?). But aren't there people in our very nation, native-born U.S. citizens with roots in America dating back centuries or at least many decades, who look African, Hispanic, and Asian? It seems to me that there are two options: Either black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans are as much part of our nation as Europeans, in which case it's hard to imagine who's left to be "international-looking" (I take it that the author wasn't commenting only about, say, South Asians, many of whom have a "look" that wasn't visible in large numbers in the U.S. until recently). Or "international-looking" means, well, "non-white" -- in which case what does that say about the author's vision of who is a genuine member of our own nation?
"[People] see the demise of the native-born in a recent occurrence in Richmond, Va. There a city councilman, Sa'ad El-Amin, has forced the removal of a mural of Robert E. Lee, the most beloved of all Virginians. When I was a kid even Northerners respect Robert E. Lee. Not a word was heard against him." The most beloved of all Virginians? More so than Jefferson and Washington? A man who stands for defense of the Confederacy is more beloved than one who stands for liberty and one who is the father of our country? What does that say about the worldview of all Virginians, or at least of all Virginians of the sort that Roberts seems to like? And might it be that some Virginians -- perhaps, say, black Virginians -- might not have much love for someone who, honorable as he might have been in his own way, is most noted for defending a country that was committed to keeping many Virginians in slavery?
"The original U.S. Constitution that [legal scholar Raoul] Berger well understood is now dead. Its essential feature -- equality in law -- has been replaced by differential group rights based on skin color, gender, disability and, sooner or later, sexual orientation. . . ." Really? The essential feature of the original U.S. constitution, which protected race-based slavery, was "equality in law"? "Differential group rights based on skin color, gender, disability and sexual orientation" are somehow something new, and not a part of the 1787 order? Which history books has he been reading?
"In the old feudal system, there were no First Amendment rights. The legally privileged were free to engage in hate speech and to verbally harass others, but any commoner who replied in kind could be sued or have his tongue cut out. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott still has his tongue, but just barely. He used his tongue in a way that gave offense to the new aristocrats. Black Americans have been granted the right to be offended by any words they don't like and to extract retribution.
The offending speaker finds himself forced into contrition and humiliating apologies. Often the penalty is a destroyed career. . . . The spectacle proves -- if proof is any longer required -- that the First Amendment has been trumped by the race-based privileges of the new feudalism." Wow -- "black Americans" are "the new aristocrats"; and when a public outcry leads to political damage to a politician (the general way in which free speech often works in a free country), that's somehow the equivalent of "feudalism."
"It was left to the libertarian, Llewellyn Rockwell, to point out that, fundamentally, states' rights is about the Tenth Amendment, not segregation. Thurmond's political movement sought a return to the enumerated powers guaranteed by the Constitution to the states. . . . Lott's tribute to Thurmond is easily defended on principled constitutional grounds. " Interesting. Did Thurmond's political movement also seek a return to other provisions guaranteed by the Constitution, such as, say, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments? If not -- if Thurmond's political movement actually sought continuing violations of those Amendments -- then shouldn't good constitutionalists be a bit uncomfortable with tributes to Thurmond?
Quite a remarkable man, Paul Craig Roberts, with quite remarkable opinions and ways of expressing them.
Here's a link to the column Volokh just eviscerated. http://www.vdare.com/roberts/freedom_index.htm
I hate to call anyone a racist. It's the new PC insult dejour, but "Or "international-looking" means, well, "non-white" -- in which case what does that say about the author's vision of who is a genuine member of our own nation?"
Robert's point, I surmise, had nothing to do with race. It was a purely economic one that the proportion of our wages that the government takes out of our hide is similar to the proportion that slave owners took out of the salaries of their skilled slaves, who worked lumberyards, brewers, and various other manufacturing operations.
That is an interesting point, which I did not know before. But it has no connection to the other discussion of class-based rights, rather than individual rights, which was the original and successful plan for the federal government.
Have I missed something? Or has Gene missed something?
Congressman Billybob
No, you don't. You enjoyed it.
Blacks like Jesse Jackson and Queezy Mfume and Louis Farrakhan are allowed to be mad-dog foam-at-the-mouth racists, and it is ignored if not outright excused.
If a non-black even acknowledges that race exists, he is a branded a racist.
How many Holier-Than-Thou pills have you taken today?
What we've "achieved" is a genteel sort of more-or-less uniform slavery administered through the IRS and the other alphabet agencies, with some special privileges written into it for favored groups. All other things being equal, the political order of the late 19th century was better: fewer people were discriminated against under color of law.
The Constitution is now of purely historical interest. Persons who'd like to dispute that are invited to read the McCain Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, and the Supreme Court decision that upheld it.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
He is, even if his rhetoric and analogies are sensationalist -- the points he's making are all too valid. The hard fact is, in modern America, we don't work for our employers (or ourselves, if self-employed), we all work for the government. If we don't give the government what it demands, we go to prison. This country didn't have an income tax until 1913 (save for during civil war), and I daresay that great American statesment of the founding era would have called it a form or species of slavery. Obviously, it's not the same thing as chattel slavery where someone owns and can sell you and your family, but it's an enslavement, in a clinical sense, to the government, which can imprison you if you do not hand over well more than a tithe of your earnings. Volokh ought to save his anger, outrage or moral indignation for that situation, not for Paul Roberts.
Volokh should read Walter Williams on slavery. There were many types of slavery practiced other than chattel slavery. Many other systems which are similar to slavery have been devised to extract the fruits of labor from the one who works: for example, worker debt schemes, piece works schemes etc...
PCR is pointing out that as taxes rise too high, the system looks more and more like one of those systems called slavery. Volokh was setting up a straw man argument and didn't fairly read PCR.
And who is more racist, someone who points out the intentional racial design of our immigration policy or those who created it?
The middle class nature of our society (that's middle class, not white) is being replaced with a populist or recipient style of thinking that I've come across in people from other countries. This is being done by immigration, by design. People who hate the US and hate the west are being brought in on purpose as societal change agents.
The middle class, nominally Christian nature of our society is being replaced with highly aggressive, might-makes-right types of behavior which is common in most of the third world. PCR is not racist to point this out.
Would Volokh explain just what a Hispanic looking person looks like? I mean since he is the embodiment of correct thinking, just who are the hispanics and what do they look like?
For the record Hispanics are black, Indian and white looking. I detect some odd racial assumptions in Volokh's writing that he needs to expunge.
Why can't good "grassroots conservative" Republicans jump on this ideological gravy train as well? I mean, don't we need the votes among blacks and Hispanics?
There is plenty written about folks whose children are taken away by the state for various reasons, some good, some not. The government and its minions also enable mothers to take children from fathers with often no real justification. Daughters can be grabbed by feminists in the education establishment and brainwashed into becoming essentially indentured servants in the workforce. Finally, the state makes it very hard for people trying to give their children a real education instead of the indoctrination that the NEA serves up.
But what could Barry Goldwater have known about a conservative view of the Constitution, compared with the sensitive PC 'conservative' of the 21st century? After all, enforcing correct thought is so much more important than freedom, especially if that means the freedom to hold ideas we don't approve of. So quit griping and get with the program.
Political correctness and uncontrolled immigration are a deadly combination that will destroy our political freedoms. That's a FACT.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.