“Still, men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves, or as if anyone could possess under a tyrant a single thing in his own name. Yet they act as if their wealth really belonged to them, and forget that it is they themselves who give the ruler the power to deprive everybody of everything, leaving nothing that anyone can identify as belonging to somebody. They notice that nothing makes men so subservient to a tyrant's cruelty as property; … Most often, after becoming rich by despoiling others, under the favor of his protection, they find themselves at last enriching him with their own spoils.”
The Framers presumed a cornerstone of civic virtue. They knew an upstart republic could not survive without it, and that the country would fall when personal and public fibre weakened. They hoped that the new union would learn from societies past who gave up freedom, and from ambitious tyrants who filled the vacuum that soon followed. Framers expected despots to lie, cheat, steal, conceal, deceive and obscure -- anything that lulled people away from their protections -- and could only hope that people would stand against it. But over time energy stiffened, will lethargized, and civic consciousness vanguards deteriorated. As a result, tax protections and the procedures to invoke them oxidized.
All Americans can avail Fourth Amendment and special Fifth Amendment taxation due process. But not everyone should. “There are found almost as many people to whom tyranny seems advantageous,” De la Boetie observed, “as those to whom liberty would seem desirable.” A federal government of few enumerated powers has 4.2 million workers and contracts with many others. Millions more take other extra-constitutional benefits.
“And whoever is pleased to unwind the skein will observe that not the six thousand but a hundred thousand, and even millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied.”
The equation is simple: black-letter taxing power funds black-letter spending authority, and extra-constitutional taxation funds extra-constitutional federal power. The more a person depends on income tax receipts for their economic well-being, the stronger their opinion is that someone else has a duty to pay for it. But a compelled duty cannot service extra-constitutionality. Therefore, income taxation that pays for those extra services must be voluntary. Volunteer if you work for, contract with, or retire from:
* a federal entity that depends on federal income tax receipts;
* a state entity that adheres to federal rules funded from federal income tax receipts; or
* a state entity that adheres to federal rules outside of Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 17 jurisdiction.
Volunteer if you hold or held licensure set by, or dependent upon, a federal function exercised outside of Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 17 jurisdiction.
Volunteer if you hold or held qualifications set by, or dependent upon, a federal function exercised outside of Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 17 jurisdiction.
Volunteer if you receive payments, grants, entitlements or subsidies funded with income tax receipts.
Volunteer if you invoke federal power to forward extra-constitutional social engineering issues important to you, single-issue advocacy, or other extra-constitutional purposes.
Continue to volunteer if you subscribed an oath to uphold, protect or defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. This includes military, public safety professions, federal and state officers, others. Oath-takers are commonly unprepared for their taxation dilemma. On the one hand, they are duty-bound by the terms of their oath to protect against vacant income allegations made against them. On the other hand, it is the oath-bound who routinely engineer, execute, impose, grow, and uphold extra-constitutional federal power. ‘Protecting freedom’, ‘defending the American way of life’, ‘protecting the community’ or ‘putting my life in harm’s way’ are examples of laudable objectives routinely confused with a commitment to protect and defend, or uphold, the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.
So. How many people are left after that? Clearly, modern America is distant from its foundations. To the extent that a life depends on public pretensions, not paying for them is a recipe for collapse. Income tax paid when improper and not paid when proper endangers the republic. The former creates a tyrannical behemoth; the latter, a nation that cannot fund itself. Either way, improper taxation diminishes personal and national vigor.
Collaring the golden calf is the exact Constitutional remedy. In the unique American system, the power to do so is within reach of everyone. Sound Discourse correctives put things in order. But, it is not a magic elixir that work in a vacuum. If income taxation is corrected but personal fibre is unexamined; lives are un-changed; personal benefits are protected; everyone else’s benefits are curtailed; rights are unguarded; authority is un-scrutinized; dictates are obeyed; despotic power is venerated; lies are overlooked; kleptocracies are supported and spending is unchecked, the American experiment ends.
It is incredible,” De la Boetie noticed, “how, as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it. Obeying so easily and so willingly … that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.”
People naturally want to carve in property protection and safety parts of the equation and overlook the cost and risk parts. If that temptation ever could work, it ceased being an option long ago. Nor can a promise of personal change, later, be conditioned on public change, today. These sorts of self-negotiations once bought time, but no longer. A twenty trillion note debt is double that of less than a decade ago and, like any other killer drug, requires even more spending to simply maintain the status quo.
This-all said, few can easily forsake the modern living standards for a more sustainable existence. Fewer will embrace that change. What do you choose to do? On the one hand, every person who invokes those protections strengthens vitality and weakens despots. On the other hand, rights invoked without responsibility gravely endanger the republic. Now is the time to figure out how much artifice you can keep and what the risk is for doing so. The aggregate of this individual action will either sculpt a strong republic or confuse it with the memory of one.
Discourse began by saying that modern Americans cling to bondage, and that freedom can be reclaimed.
“If in order to have liberty nothing more is needed than to long for it,” Etienne de la Boetie observed, ”if only a simple act of the will is necessary, is there any nation in the world that considers a single wish too high a price to pay in order to recover rights which it ought to be ready to redeem at the cost of its blood, rights such that their loss must bring all men of honor to the point of feeling life to be unendurable and death itself a deliverance?”
The modern process demands none of the warfare or violence common to peoples past who tried to recover what had withered away. The unique American idea and government structure designed to reflect it brings recovery within reach of anyone who wants it. If your income taxation does not reflect your values, it is past time to act.
