Everything I have come to believe about the income
tax, which has led to my recent decision and the potential for my life to be wrecked,
is based primarily on human rights.
As human beings we are born with certain rights to
freely do what humans naturally tend or need to do in the course of being
human. We have, of course, a right to
live. If that right is going to have any
substance to it, we must toil to gather what can be considered the
“essentials”: food, clothing, shelter.
These essential needs lead to what could arguably be considered our
primary right as human beings, because without exercising this right, we
endanger our own right to life. This is
our right to work, to toil, to labor, with the purpose of attaining those
things that keep us going. This right to
work has also been recognized as being an integral part of the human’s “pursuit
of happiness,” another natural right.
This is not to suggest that we necessarily derive happiness from our
jobs – that isn’t a right, unfortunately.
It’s luck. The point is, our
right to work is recognized as something we do as human beings that goes beyond
acquiring the barest necessities to keep us and our children just this side of
death. Working for a living is our
primary means to ends that concern more than mere survival.
I’m a pretty simple man leading a pretty simple
life. Of course, I am unique from every
other man, but all things considered, there are millions of me all over this
country. My pursuit of happiness at this
stage of life primarily centers on raising my two boys to adulthood, and
offering to society to young men who are responsible, fair-minded, respectful,
and fun-loving (among other awesome attributes). And I’m going to take a moment here to share
some of the thoughts and feelings I have dealt with today while being around
them.
Critics of my choice to engage in civil disobedience
might say that I’m just trying to pull the old heartstrings to gain sympathy
for my cause, and that is exactly
what I’m doing. With all due respect to
some of my critics, I have to say that some of you come off as the coldest,
most heartless people I’ve ever conversed with.
If heartstrings have any purpose, they remind us of our priorities. I sometimes can’t help but wonder if some
people think we are on this earth to play our part in some grand, corporate
experiment. We are here to do our part to make sure our government can raise revenue, can meet a budget, can launch a new
department. My God, if I watched some of
you tearing up while reading an account of a mother being sold down the river and
separated from her children, I’d question whether or not your tears were because
you couldn’t be sure the buyer got the best possible deal. Some of you think the income tax is purely an
issue of government revenue, as if the buying and selling of slaves were a
simple matter of commerce. I’m here to
tell you that the tax on your earned income concerns much more than government revenue.
As I wait now for the axe to fall because, as an
American, I will never again pay a tax on my earned income, I can no longer
take for granted any hug I share with my children as being just one in a long
and continuous series. It’s now a
countdown. How many hugs do we have left
before I’m homeless or in prison?
Without knowing for sure (knock on wood), I can’t help but thinking that
these are the kind of thoughts that go through the mind of a person who has
just discovered they are terminally ill.
Everything that once rolled along in the normal routine of life is now
part of a big countdown. I can say unequivocally
that my whole “pursuit of happiness” has been shot to hell, because the threats
that have been hanging over my head since I first started working – the same
threats that hang over yours – are potentially not far from being realized. And where does this whole train of events
begin? When do the threats first begin
to apply to me? When I violate some
person or their property? No. When I step out into to life and exercise my
fundamental right to earn my living.
Some might say, “We all live under many
threats. It’s called the law. Do this bad thing, and this will be the
consequence. You have been warned.” And you are correct.
But allow me to take you back to what I said are the
underpinnings of my stance: human rights.
The reality of human rights means that there are some laws that should
never be written, that is, laws that contradict those rights or force people to
jump through hoops in order to exercise them.
“Dad, I need a hug.”
“Now son, I’ve told you before. There are certain things the government
insists that I do in connection with my earning a living, and daddy didn’t do
those things. So, just a couple more years
in this cell and daddy will be right out to give you that hug.”
Tell me the income tax doesn’t have the power to “retard,
impede, burden, or in any manner control” the exercise of my fundamental right
to work. The words in quotes are words
the Supreme Court used to support their unanimous ruling to strike down a tax
that threatened…the working man?
No. A federal bank. That tax, because of its potential to do
those things to the operations of a bank, was declared unconstitutional and
void. If a federal bank deserves such
protection, what about the human beings that bank is supposed to serve?
In the end, if they bring the full weight of the law
to bear on me, I may sue the government not only for violating my fundamental
right to work, but for violating my rightful “pursuit of happiness.” I don’t know, there’s just something about
being around my children to love and care for them that makes me happy. Call me crazy.
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