See ? You can make intelligent statements when you want to. I agree with most of those and I’m glad to see you aren’t such a simpleton as your original response to me indicated.
I think my comments were exactly on point in response to your original positions staked out here:
*Can’t go along on this one, friend. John Jay states, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” Washingrad needs no such power. *
How else was I to take such a statement other than as a declaration that you refuse Washington the power to tax entirely ? You did not limit your statement to only “income taxes” as being destructive nor offer any other taxes as being valid. Having no tax revenue results inescapably in all the defaulted obligations I listed.
*The only way they could make it Constitutional was to sew it on as an amendment. The fact of the Amendment is an argument for its own illegitimacy.*
That certainly sounds like an absurd statement to me. The fact that laws require a basis in an Amendment is certainly NOT “an argument for its own illegitimacy”.
*What that Washingrad does with your income tax money is it, exactly, that they need to be doing?*
I simply answered your question with regard to debt service and military pensions, etc. as to “what they need to be doing”. It hardly seems fair to complain that I answered your question.
*I say it’s time we cut off their allowance. If they want money, let them do what the rest of us do-—produce something or get a real job.*
Again, that seems to reinforce the idea that you would disallow ALL tax revenue — leaving only anarchy.
You have to be aware that both the Left and even people like O’Reilly scan boards like Free Republic looking for examples of extreme statements they can use to discredit us all as Right Wing Extremists and Anarchists.
* How else was I to take such a statement other than as a declaration that you refuse Washington the power to tax entirely ?
As my case is made from the Constitution, that necessarily includes Article I., Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes...” One cannot hold the Constitution inviolate without an acknowledgement that Washington has the powers (few and defined) given it. A familiarity with the document renders this one of those “goes without saying” matters, so I didn’t say it expressly because it was implicit within the text. The tax on income was always in view.
I still maintain that when you have to add an amendment to force the constitutionality of a principle previously found unconstitutional by the Court, it is an evidence that the principle you are adding was not found in the original text (else would not have to be added...) and therefore is a forceful argument that it is a principle alien to the Founders’ conceptions and thus, yes, an argument for its own illegitimacy. You may differ, as you do, but I contend for the statement because the Sixteenth Amendment stands in contrast, not comparison, to the entire grain of the rest of the document.
* It hardly seems fair to complain that I answered your question.
This is a good comeback and not without its merits, so I’ll pass on the temptation to defend my original statement. In asking what D.C. does with your income tax that needs doing, I simply mean that education is paid for by property taxes (in the main), roads by fuel taxes and the cost of our defense is equal to the amount of corporate taxes in the country. Income tax revenue goes exclusively to pay interest on our ridiculous debts in foreign banks for all of the pork and Socialism we could (and should) do without. Since we did buy it, we do need to pay for it, but we need to STOP BUYING IT.
My argument is simply that Washington live within the means provided by the original text of the Constitution as written by the Framers. Money is power and the Framers provided for very little of it to keep Washington from assuming the powers they now claim. Government’s scope and scale had grown exponentially since 1913 and this was made possible only by the sudden influx of revenue geenerated by the plunder of the People’s wages. Our fatal mistake was in allowing Washington more money and more armaments than the People hold as a check upon it. By giving them trillions we have given them an overwhelming power against us. By providing them with a standing army, we have rendered our pop-guns useless as an insurance policy against tyranny. Jefferson spoke of “criminals and government” in the same breath as “the greatest threat” to our liberties. And we have overfunded and overarmed the criminals in government to our own peril. You would not arm and pay a robber, but we have and do.
And Jefferson, by the way, made the entire Louisiana Purchase without a nickel of income tax. The opportunity was golden, but never did it occur to him to fund the no-brainer by demanding a cut of every American’s earnings-—something to which the government has no title, but which Karl Marx made one of the planks of his Manifesto.
It is impossible to have limited government when you empower tyrants with unlimited funds.
As for O’Reilly and Leftists, they will always find fodder for their slants with or without me. While I never like arming my enemies, neither do I live my life in their service, express myself by their guidelines or entertain principles with any reference to them at all. I will not empower them at the expense of my natural rights under the First Amendment. After all, they never curb their prejudices from respect to my point of view.
My principles derive from the founders and their legacy in law. I should hope that would place me out of step with those out of step with the Constitution. That’s precisely the company I prefer. To be deemed “extremist” by radicals is an honour I embrace. But weighing whether what I firmly believe may or may not be counted extreme by those whose scales measure only their own arrogance is a favor I will not do my enemies. They discredit themselves, not my integrity. In these times of extreme danger and extreme debt, the man who fails to be extreme in his patriotism is unworthy the name “American”. I believe what I believe without reference or resort to anyone else’s pocket scale, just as you should. If that places me on the Left, the Right or elsewhere, I leave that to those who measure principle over having it. I aspire, as yet unsuccessfully, to be as extreme as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry without whom we would not have had a Republic to begin with. And with the latter, I can only say, if this be treason, make the most of it.
It is a fearful thing indeed when a stern argument for limited government under the rule of law as embodied by the United States Constitution classes an American as a “Right-Wing Extremist and Anarchist” by even his countrymen who profess a love of liberty.
http://www.freelythinking.com/The_Law.pdf