“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,-
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
-Declaration of Independence-

It is that day again. That day when the government asserts its onerous authority over the citizens of these the United States. The day that demonstrates the unwillingness of the States to protect their citizens from the grasping hand of the federal government. The citizens themselves most often complicit in this base violation of their own Right of Property. This day where millions of Americans are forced to perform a task for the United States government, unpaid, on pain of criminal prosecution to their own detriment.

If we truly believe in the Declaration of Independence, that all free people are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, among these Life, Liberty, and Property (or “pursuit of Happiness”), then it is unconscionable that we remain complicit in the tyrannical imposition of government upon our very livelihoods. If the bureaucrats cannot find better way to pay for their continued employment within the agency of the State without violating the sacred Right to Property of the People, then their employment is no longer justified and likely unnecessary.

How many more generations shall we pass on this injustice to, silently, without protest or disruption? How much longer shall we accept the imposition of the State on the very livelihood of our children and our children’s children? Unless the Founding Fathers were gravely mistaken, and the Right to Property is not unalienable, then our complacency under a grand tyrannical enterprise upon the People must end.

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends,
than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
-John Stuart Mill-

Do the federal and State governments have the right to tax at all? Of course, they do, without such power to tax at all, government couldn’t function. Doesn’t the Constitution empower the federal government to lay taxes upon the personal incomes of the People? Certainly, it does, though this was not always the case. It also once allowed for slavery and prohibition against alcohol. This is the fine distinction that the People must remember and understand. The legality of an unconscionable evil does not mitigate the evil itself. As conservatives, we are supposed to take heed of not just the Constitution but specifically the Natural Law upon which the Constitution depends.

From the ratification of the Constitution in 1788 until the middle of the Civil War in 1861, the federal government did not take a penny from the People. Taxes were assessed on the business incomes of companies and as excise taxes upon the exchange of goods and services. From 1861 to 1866, five short years, a tax of 3% on incomes, and 5% on incomes of the very wealthy, was imposed upon the People in order to pay to save the Union. This tax, with one revision in 1862, expired in 1866. As there were vacancies on the Supreme Court and the country was locked in a Civil War, this tax was not challenged before it expired.

There was not another attempt at an income tax for almost twenty years, when finally, in 1894, the progressive Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894, which, among other things, imposed a 2% tax on the top 10% of households. This 2% tax, minuscule by today’s standards, was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1895, in the case of Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. It was struck down as unconstitutional, because the Constitution was framed to protect the People from exactly such tyrannical usurpation of their Right to Property.

Consider one more simple fact. In 2014, the IRS took $1,311,482,260,000 (net) from the People of the United States, yet the federal government still managed a deficit of $483.35 billion that same year. At $50,000 a year, those tax revenue dollars could have created a total of 26,229,645 good middle class jobs in the economy. Instead, those jobs were liquidated, sent to Washington, DC, to be wasted on graft and corruption. Every dollar that is taken out of the economy via taxation is one less dollar available to drive demand and becomes one more dollar to drive the power of the State.

Conservatives, patriots, and countrymen! Please understand that the Founding Fathers never intended us to be tax servants. To them, the term “tax-payer” would have been a high insult, demeaning the individual into a tool of the State, undermining the great sacrifice the American People had made liberating themselves from the English crown. They understood that while the State could make a claim to our sacred livelihoods that we were not free!

Be Brave! Be Free!

 

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Liberty is For The Win!