Think It Over, Part II

In attempting to share my “earth shattering” revelation the other day (that certain rights are responsibilities in themselves and warrant extra protection from government interference), I asked you toward the end of the last post to look at the taxes taken out of your pay stub.  How anti-climactic is that?  You might look at whatever amount was taken out of your last paycheck and ask, “This is what he’s fussing about?  This is what made him tell the IRS to go suck it and risk a prison sentence?”

Easy to dismiss what’s on that pay stub, I know – just as it would have been easy a couple hundred years ago to dismiss paying an extra three pennies a pound for tea.

We Need To Care About What Could Happen

Boil it all down and we will see that law – good law – has its origin in human compassion.  This compassion governs which laws are written, as well as which laws are forbidden.  Consider that popular protests are generally to call attention to laws that shouldn’t be on the books, or laws that should be.

 

People want to feel good, and want their neighbors to feel good, too (note: I am leaving the crazy and criminal elements out of this equation – I’m talking about good, normal, healthy people).  People understand that it is highly undesirable to have bad things happen to them and the people they know.  The purpose of law is to prevent, as far as possible, bad things from happening to people, or at least to provide a remedy if they do.

Think about the people who are right now sitting in prison in connection with the income tax – sitting there thinking about their families they miss, the business they once ran, or the job they once held; people who, all things being equal and having no other run-ins with the law, would still be “out there” enjoying all of those things but for the income tax.

Think about the people who are right now going through the court system because of the income tax, people who are in the process of losing their jobs or having their businesses shut down, people who are peaceable and otherwise law-abiding who face being torn away from their families possibly for years.  Think about their children.  I know that sounds cliché, but seriously, think about the real trauma these children must face (or are facing) – trauma that never would have shown up on their radar if a tax had never been imposed on their parent’s income, parents who, apart from the income tax, still pay taxes.

Think about the millions who live in the “Progressive 9” who never have to fear these possibilities from their state authorities in connection with exercising their right to work.  Think about the generations of Americans who never had these threats hanging over their heads in connection with going out and dutifully meeting one of their most pressing responsibilities as human beings.  Yet their paved streets had lights; their firehouses and police stations were on call – proof that these generations of Americans were still taxpayers (as are the residents of the “9”).  Could these people be prosecuted for evading other taxes?  YES!  But they have (or had) NO taxes connected to the exercise of their fundamental right to earn their living.

What does it mean that we even have rights as human beings?  It means that some laws should never be written, because they either do or potentially could “retard, impede, burden, or control” the exercise of those rights.

We have people languishing in prison only because a tax has been imposed on their income, which they only began earning when they began exercising their right – and responsibility – to work for their living.  This is a travesty for a so-called free country.  There are other ways to meet the fiscal needs of government without this dangerous form of taxation (as you now know if you’ve been reading this blog, or history).  An income tax should be the tool of despots, of tyrants, of dictators.

When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of abolishing a tax that Maryland tried to impose upon a federal bank operating there, the arguments of the unanimous Court kept harping on what such a tax could do, what it might do, to interfere in any way with the operations of the bank – they never cited what the tax was doing.  In that sense, the Court almost sounded paranoid.  It isn’t what the income tax is doing to you, citizen.  It’s what it could do.

Imagine the faces of those children whose mom or dad is in prison right now only because of the income tax.  Their parents were working, fulfilling their right and responsibility to support themselves and their children.  They were pursuing their own happiness, their American Dream.  They were also paying many other taxes every day as they went about their business.  Now they’re not.  Now these parents are a burden to society, because now we are feeding them and clothing them and housing them while losing all the other tax money they were generating.  And if the children have no other relatives to turn to, the burden of their welfare is now ours.  The absurdity of the income tax and its punishments turns everything on its head. 

Knowing that there are other legitimate ways for governments to raise a buck without the possibility of these needless tragedies, doesn’t human compassion dictate that we look these children in the eyes and say, “Don’t worry, kid.  We’re going to get rid of this tyrannical system and put your family back together.”?  Must the very bonds of our families be held over a barrel so we can pay for government programs that are supposedly rooted in compassion?  Can’t we feel good about funding government by pitching in a few extra pennies for that six-pack or for that junk made overseas, instead of hijacking one of our most sacred rights and forcing a shakedown?

 

Just because the people who put this system in place didn’t consider this stuff doesn’t mean we can’t.  Just because they took a wrong turn doesn’t mean we are obligated to stay the course.  It’s time to stop and think about what we’re doing, about who we are.

But then, we could look at those children and say, "Trust us, honey.  It's worth it."  At which point their eyes would dry, and they'd shrug their shoulders and say, "Of course it is.  What was I thinking?  I mean, how else would we pay for schools?"