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.
MACVSOG68 to Zon: 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. 111
MACVSOG68: No offense, but Knight is spelled with a "K". 217
You got some major projection problem going on there.
Nice article. However, the article only addresses one of the two most evil taxes in the land; the other one is the property tax. Between the two of them, virtually ALL evil is covered...
MACVSOG68 to Zon: 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. 111 and 219
In other words you wrote in your 111 post/response to me that my response to your well thought out post* was to do something like criticize your spelling.
MACVSOG68 to philman_36: I think you forgot the part about the response to a well thought out post. Try reading first so you don't look quite so silly. The "dime a dozen" comment still applies. 220
So in your 213 post you criticized philman_36's spelling in his well thought out post. But that's not what you just intended it (the part you underlined) to mean. No. You intended it to mean that your post at 213 was a well thought out post wherein you also criticized philman_36's spelling.
You can't have it both ways. That is sooooo sleazy. EWWWW!!!
Your idea of a well thought out post: Actually, we have someone who can read and write here, and can use a tad of logic. I don't assume simply because you can log into FR that you are in possession of any of those three abilities....to any measurable degree. -- MACVSOG68 65 I don't think that is a well thought out post. Especially since your very next posts at 68 you demonstrated that you didn't know how Alan Keyes got entered into the discussion you were having about the article that Keyes had written. As you put it: How did Keyes get into this discussion? It boggles the mind. A tad of logic would be to use the find function on your browser to see where Alan Keyes entered the discussion. ...Since you missed it the first time when you read the article. (I'm assuming you read the article.)
I’m mostly interested in things that involve statistical distributions such as demographics and things that influence those distributions such as interactions with public policy such as tax policy. I don’t do any formal research on these types of things, it’s just a hobby. Most of my research is in medicine. But as PhD statistician I get collaborations in social stuff as well. I like and understand economics and am happy to be able to predict how Bernanke is going to respond to a question before he responds. Russo's film gave credibility to the 1913 scam and you can see it percolating through the system today.
It also helps to understand how the demographic changes are going to play out in the coming tax and entitlement reform. When I saw that FDT (and he is an extraordinary intellect btw) was aware of these things, I got excited that we may see an opportunity for a big improvement in our lives coming. I don't go for Perkins type utopia, he never got to discussing it and besides it's not real.
Perkins makes some accurate obversations and then weaves a story around those observations. He says Saddam was our man. Well Saddam was the KGBs man and he was also France’s man and etc.
He says Nixon took the United States off the gold standard (true), and the de facto money standard became oil (true). But then he goes on to say the Saudis cut a deal with Americans that oil would only be sold in USD. I don’t buy that one. That happened as a result of America’s prominence in the world after WWII as well as their oil know-how and work ethic before and after WWII. Americans were smart. They knew the tribal rivalries in parts of the Middle East and they knew the history of how one pipeline was blown up after another. What the President of ARAMCO did was to get advice that the one thing Arabs don't do (and alot of other people in the world as well) is to destroy someone else's ricebowl meaning their agriculture. So ARAMCO put water irrigation mains next to oil pipelines. Any hothead Arab trying to blowup an oil pipeline would then also damage the water mains and that would incur the wrath of the locals. The locals guarded the oil pipelines with their life.
That kind of planning was what made Americans the big influence there.
But then France became a big influence as well. So I think Perkins went overboard in claiming this was solely America's backwater.
MACVSOG68 to Zon: 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. 111 MACVSOG68: No offense, but Knight is spelled with a "K". 217
Since your entire sequence of posts was nothing but criticisms of my "accuracy", I responded in kind. And if you notice, I said "well thought out post". Your posts were anything but. You have yet to even touch on the subject of the thread. It seems you can dish it out, but cannot take it. The numerous mistakes you have made in your posts do not put you in much of a position to criticize anyone else.
If high school is not treating you well, go see a counselor. It's ok to hang around with those more intelligent than you, but use that opportunity to learn, not to demonstrate your immature jealousy.
Neither of you had anything remotely related to the thread. Both of you merely criticize the writing of others. You may have some well thought out posts...somewhere, just not here. I would have to assume that you both are part of this ridiculous tax protester cult who actually believe all of the "unconstitutional" BS, and simply want to try and take aim at anyone who points out the absurdity of the arguments, but who haven't enough knowledge to counter them. Zon, I believe I pointed out your inconsistencies much earlier, but you seem incapable of recognizing them, which in itself is indicative of your age and educational level. You might take the meaning of your tag line seriously. You have been intellectually dishonest from the first post to me until now. You have repeatedly lied about what I said earlier to make it look like something it was not. Honesty?
As I said, the bottom feeders here are a strange lot.
I appreciate having your view. Perkins was all over the map but I thought it interesting his talk about the hitmen/jackal in South America. The idea of lending too much money they have no hope of paying back and then using that debt as leverage to get other stuff makes for an interesting story. There are three parts in all btw, locatable by typing his name in the search. I did pick up on his Peace Corp hippy utopia bent and wondered how someone like that gets to work for IMF/World Bank in the first place, much less as a “hit man.” Seems he would not even be their type.
Yeah, no kidding. This place is infested with tax nut-jobs like "Hostage" who thinks the idiotic Russo and his idiotic movie has a clue.
It's sad to watch someone shill for a scammer.
Hostage will be along shortly to acuse me of being part of the tax "business" as he has done elsewhere and others have done likewise with regard to you on this thread.
Come on, he's not a nut job. Why would you say that? Is it because he thinks the Federal Reserve is owned by private individuals? LOL!
I wonder how many of them have fallen for the Nigerian money transfer scam....?
Yes and no. He doesn't have a clue about the federal system of taxation. For instance, he thinks that there are no laws behind "1040 taxes."
He also apparently thinks that the Federal Reserve is evil and perhaps not really a part of the federal government.
Conspiracy nuts have to speculate about something, apparently preferably more than one thing, as so many of the nut-jobs in this thread demonstrate.
Did Liberty cheat on his taxes? Then he should go to jail...
But that's only because it's owned by foreigners.
Conspiracy nuts have to speculate about something,
They make really good films. LOL!
NO!
Have fun playing with yourselves. You look ridiculous.
You just broadcast for everyone to see that you think the Federal Reserve is not owned by private bankers.
I guess in your ridiculous discussion that you pinged me on you think the Federal Reserve is not owned by anyone, it’s just a building with offices and people that wander in from time to time.
Don’t be surprised if I don’t engage your silly tripe. You both are not worth anyone else’s time except between yourselves. Have fun looking like idiots.
What's a private banker? Is Henry Kissinger one?
Why don't you show us who owns the Fed?
Oh, yeah, Schiffty is still in federal prison. In fact, he'll probably die there since he has about 9 years to go and he's about 74. Hostage thinks he's one of the "credible" people in Russo's moronic movie. Yeah, it's always good to quote a three-time convicted federal felon. It works wonders for your credibility.
Perhaps Hostage needs a pen pal.
Irwin Schiff
#08537-014
FCI Fort Dix
P.O. Box 38
Hartford Road
Fort Dix, NJ 08640
Release date: 10-07-2016
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