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.
You're right. Henry Waxman and Ted Kennedy don't get to tell the Fed where to set interest rates or how fast to grow the money supply. How will our Republic survive?
Whoever owns the federal reserve OWNS America..
Oh please. The "owners" of the Federal Reserve don't get to vote on the Fed Funds Rate. They don't get to vote on the growth of the money supply. They don't get to keep the "profits" of the Fed. How exactly do they "OWN America"?
Huh?
some kinds of stock in those Banks YOU CANNOT BUY..
What kind of stock? Freemason stock? Illuminati stock?
Bank of America earned a nearly 18% return on equity last year. I'll bet they wish they could buy a lot more of that 6% stock so they could drag down their returns. LOL!
LoL... maybe you are as dumb as you look..
It'll probably be as funny as the rest of your posts.
No...
LOL!
some kinds of stock in those Banks YOU CANNOT BUY..
I'll bet this keeps you up at night. We don't know why......and you won't tell us. It must be really scary!!!
I recommend you quit while you’re behind....
I have to get some sleep so don’t expect any more replies from me today, but rest assured, I’ll be back to view your reply early tomorrow morning!
Now what would you call that?
From your very first post to me, you were dissembling by attempting to tear down the wording of every post I made. You made no sense, but I hung in there attempting to explain the obvious. You didn't have the knowledge to counter my comments, so you tried to turn them into a logic lesson, something you have no ability to do. I saw later that you were part of this ridiculous tax and fed protest group, and then understood your motives. I was warned privately by two posters who apparently know your nefarious motives and style, but tried nevertheless to give you the benefit of the doubt. No more. As I said, you might consider quitting while you're behind....so as not to get any "behinder"....
From your very first post to me, you were dissembling by attempting to tear down the wording of every post I made.
That is your opinion. Is that what you consider "attacking" you to be? ROTFLOL! And it wasn't "every" post you made by a long shot. Exaggeration isn't helping you.
You made no sense, but I hung in there attempting to explain the obvious.
Thanks for your opinion. Perhaps it's just you.
And don't forget, you changed your "obvious" (All laws are "do such and such or else".) to maybe I was right after all (Perhaps there are a few exceptions, but not many.) so that "argument" is BS too.
You didn't have the knowledge to counter my comments, so you tried to turn them into a logic lesson, something you have no ability to do.
Another snipe at my intelligence I see. It isn't the first time so it's no big deal. (see "where you attacked me" above if you can't follow that train of logic)
I saw later that you were part of this ridiculous tax and fed protest group, and then understood your motives.
And how is that? Simply by stating that a certain movie was good?
I was warned privately by two posters who apparently know your nefarious motives and style, but tried nevertheless to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Oh, I'm scared now that two whole posters disagree with me. Just what do they claim my "nefarious motives" are?
As I said, you might consider quitting while you're behind....so as not to get any "behinder"....
So in other words you can't find where I "attacked you first" so you go off on this tangential spiel to try to extricate yourself from the hole that you've dug for yourself.
I don't see myself getting "behinder" at all.
Back up your claim...show me where I "attacked" you "first".
"Disagree" is probably not the correct word. It appeared more like ridicule to me. But then you seem to be the one who is interested in word construction rather than substance.
And how is that? Simply by stating that a certain movie was good?
No. Nor is it just your inability to objectively look at it and challenge its points, but more because this thread is nothing new to you.
so you go off on this tangential spiel
That you have the gall to use that term with your pathetic attack on nothing more than word construction having absolutely nothing to do with the thread is nothing short of amazing. Though had I listened to those who knew you better, I would have written you off immediately....as a tangential spielmeister!
The faster you run, the behinder you get....
It appeared more like ridicule to me.
Neither their ridicule, nor yours, bothers me in the least. I notice they don't do so publicly. Have you stopped to consider why that is?
BTW, since they didn't really claim, after all, that I had "nefarious motives" is that 'all your doing'?
Yes, I've noticed, which for your own self image is probably a good thing.
I notice they don't do so publicly. Have you stopped to consider why that is?
Could I suggest embarrassment at even recognizing you?
BTW, since they didn't really claim, after all, that I had "nefarious motives" is that 'all your doing'?
Well, either you are totally oblivious to what we were actually discussing on the thread, or your motive was to somehow tear up the construction of my sentences as your way of arguing back, which would be the nefarious motive. But to answer your assumption, no the others also recognized that tactic of yours.
Shouldn’t you be in school today? Ah, you teach public school! Should have known.
It’s really a simple thing...show me where I “attacked” you “first”, Dissembler. (to put on a false appearance : conceal facts, intentions, or feelings under some pretense)
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