The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 4-15-2015

________________________________________
The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 4-15-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

Taxing Patriots — Liberty v the U.S. Tax Code
The Greatest Threat to Liberty Is the Power to Tax

By Mark Alexander

Apr. 15, 2015

“The people of the U.S. owe their Independence and their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent.” —James Madison (1823)

It is no small irony that in the same week we observe Patriots' Day1 — the opening salvos at Lexington and Concord to establish American Liberty — working Americans also endure the April 15th deadline to forcibly surrender a growing portion of our earned income to a gravely bloated central government, which redistributes much of that income to ensure public support for its malignant growth.

Excessive and unjust taxation led to the first American Revolution, and our government today appears heedless of that history as it seizes income for purposes clearly not authorized by our Constitution. Much of that income is redistributed to Democratic constituents2 in return for their political allegiance that, in turn, drives more growth and redistribution. This cycle is perilous to Liberty.

This year, American Patriots3 had to work, on average, the first 114 days of 2015 to cover their federal, state and local tax burdens. Of course, that doesn’t include the additional days of work required to pay the hidden regulatory tax — the cost of regulations built into consumer products and services — which adds about another 30 days of labor.

To put the redistribution of your income in perspective, let’s review the history of income taxes, the control government drives from the power to tax, and the resulting contest between free enterprise and socialism4.

On December 16th, 1773, “rebels” from Boston, members of a secret organization of American Patriots called the Sons of Liberty, boarded three East India Company ships and threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. This iconic event, in protest of oppressive taxation and tyrannical rule, is immortalized as “The Boston Tea Party.”

Resistance to the British Crown had been mounting over other taxes — the 1764 Sugar Act, 1765 Stamp Act and 1767 Townshend Act — which led to the Boston Massacre and gave rise to the slogan, “No taxation without representation.”

But it was the 1773 Tea Act, under which the Crown collected a three-pence tax on each pound of tea imported to the Colonies, that instigated the first Tea Party protest and seeded the American Revolution. The Tea Party uprising galvanized the Colonial movement opposing British parliamentary acts, as such were a violation of the natural, charter and constitutional rights of the British colonists.

Oppressive taxation was the catalyst for our Declaration of Independence5 in 1776 and the American Revolution.

The first alliance between the states was the Articles of Confederation6 in 1781.

That alliance and enshrinement of Liberty were then more functionally codified with the full ratification of our Constitution7 in 1789 and the appending of Ten Articles, known collectively as The Bill of Rights8, which were ratified in 1791. (I should note here, though the Bill of Rights is commonly referred to as “the first ten amendments,” it is important to distinguish articles from amendments. The former are an integral part of our Constitution, while the latter modify parts of our Constitution. The addition of the Bill of Rights was the source of hotly contested debates among our Founders. Many objected to listing the innate Rights of Man, which are “"Endowed by our Creator9”, because such listing might convey that those indigenous rights are somehow subject to amendment by man.)

Our Founders were uniformly concerned about government power to lay and collect taxes, most notably direct taxation of income, and, accordingly, they enumerated specific limitations on taxing and spending.

James Madison, the author of the Constitution, addressed the issue of unlimited spending, and he warned that misconstruction of “the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States” would result in “an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defence or general welfare.”

To ensure that federal taxation would be limited to these constraints, Article I, Section 810, Clause 1 of our Constitution (the “Taxing and Spending Clause”), as duly ratified in 1789, defined the “Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” but Section 8 required that such “Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” This, in effect, limited the power of Congress to impose direct taxes on individuals, as further outlined in Section 9: “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”

That constitutional limitation survived until 1861, when the first income tax was imposed to defray Union costs of the War Between the States. That 3 percent tax on incomes over $800 was sold as an emergency war measure. In 1894, congressional Democrats tested the Constitution again, passing a peacetime tax of two percent on income above $4,000. A year later, that tariff was overturned by the Supreme Court as not complying with the limitations set forth in Article 1.

However, the most devastating insult to economic Liberty was dealt by the father of American socialism, Woodrow Wilson, who was elected due to his mastery of classist rhetoric11 as outlined by Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto in 1848. Wilson used that rhetoric to gain rapid passage of the Sixteenth Amendment12 in 1913, which specified, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

“From whatever source derived” indeed.

The top tax rate levied under the new Amendment was 7 percent on incomes above $500,000 (about $13 million in 2014 dollars), but today, almost every individual with an income of $25,000 or more (less than $1,000 in 1914 dollars) is taxed. If Wilson had attempted to impose his tax on incomes of $1,000, a second American Revolution would have commenced immediately. But, like most usurpations of Liberty, the income tax levy has avoided insurrection by incremental imposition on ever-broader income groups over the last century.

As Madison warned, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

The Sixteenth Amendment has been used to enact unequal and discriminatory taxation of targeted groups of income classes — “progressive” taxation as it is known, which resulted in classism and the bulwark of all socialist movements, “class warfare.” It opened the floodgates for populist executives and legislators to enact taxes for expenditures not expressly authorized by our Constitution, and thus brought about the end of limited government under Rule of Law in favor of the rule of men.

The most notable of those populists was Franklin D. Roosevelt, a wealthy aristocrat. At the onset of the Great Depression, he instituted a plethora of policies that further challenged constitutional limits on our government, the cost of which would, today, threaten our nation’s economic solvency.

FDR’s economic and social solutions were shaped by his upbringing as an “inheritance welfare liberal” (those raised dependent on inheritance rather than self-reliance). He used the Great Depression as cover to redefine and expand the role of central government via countless extra-constitutional decrees, and he expanded Wilson’s program for redistribution of wealth in order to fund such folly.