Slavery; Appologies & Duty

Commentary by Steve Scroggins

In a recent column on absurd slavery apologies, I attempted to make the case that such silly and insulting activities should not get serious consideration and should be roundly rejected as absurd. After further reflection, I've changed my mind.

Some slavery apologies are due. But not the one the race-hustlers want.

A convincing case has been made that Americans live under tax slavery. According to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, in 2006 Americans had to work from January 1 to April 26th in order to pay their tax bill---that is to pay Massah Sam (D.C.) and Massah Gov (Your-state-here). After that date, then and only then were American taxpayers (i.e., slaves) working for their own benefit. That's why they called April 26th "Tax Freedom Day" for 2006. Coincidentally, April 26th is the date many Southern states observe Confederate Memorial Day to honor the soldiers who fought to preserve the Constitutional Republic and the principle of consent.

More on Tax Freedom Day

Economist and syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts argues that all Americans, in terms of their ownership of their own labor, are worse off than medieval serfs and more on a level with 19th century black slaves. In his essay entitled "Compassionate Tyranny," Roberts writes,

The U.S. has constructed a society, the first in modern history, in which native-born productive citizens are the tax slaves of the welfare and immigrant lobbies. The 35 million taxpayers who carry the burden of the income tax have no more claim to their income than did medieval serfs or 19th century black slaves.

I think it's high time that the Georgia government and the U.S. empire apologize for this outrage. They're spending our money to buy their own re-elections and we all have to work almost four months each year just to satisfy our masters' demands. Expressed another way, out of 24 hours in each day, 8 hours belongs to our masters; we get to keep whatever we can earn the other 16 hours.

If you think you have "freedom," just try not paying the master. If we don't pay, we go to jail...unless, of course, we're elected Governor...then we can pay late or just get a retroactive law written to give us special tax breaks.

OK, even Gov. Perdue pays his slave taxes to fund the welfare "constituents," our military adventures, infrastructure, helicopter rides for the Governor, $500 hammers, etc.----he just gets an extra cut back, what we might call the "windfall perks of office." When a Governor refuses to place his assets in a blind trust and when his net worth almost doubles while he's in elected office like our Governor's has, well, to paraphrase Shakespeare, Corruption by any other name still smells. It's fair to say that, despite the concepts of the 'rule of law' and 'equal protection,' many in the political class are more "equal" than the rest of us.

And while the politicians are at it, they should apologize for violating their Oaths of Office where they pledge to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." Aside from being a really sick joke, it's an insulting outrage. Any thinking person knows that the Constitution has been widely ignored for many decades (most notably since Lincoln's immoral war 1860-1865) and violated with greater frequency in the most recent decades.

Abraham Lincoln was the first to implement an unconstitional income tax. The Founders knew that an income tax was the predecessor to economic slavery....and that war would likely be the pretext for seizing extraordinary powers. Lincoln and his Congressional Republican 'War Party' opened that Pandora's box to achieve their lust for power. Prior to 1913 (16th Amendment), there's NO question that the income tax was unconstitutional.

There are significant questions as to whether the 16th Amendment authorizing the income tax was ever properly ratified by the required 3/4 of the States. See these links below and draw your own conclusions based on the facts.

www.givemeliberty.org/features/taxes/notratified.htm
www.thelawthatneverwas.com/new/home.asp
http://political-resources.com/taxes/16thamendment/default.htm
Don't try the ratification argument with the IRS. They will seize your assets and throw you in jail. You may be right, but you'll be in jail making the argument. As Voltaire once said, "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."

Yes, we may be due an apology for gross misconduct carried out by our so-called leaders and representatives. But truth be told, I really don't want an apology from those lying scoundrels. Let me get my hands around their throats, then I'll get my apology. What I really want is to correct the situation that leaves most Americans as tax slaves. I want tax Emancipation. I want the Constitution restored and followed in practice.

"The constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." --Patrick Henry

Like most reasonable people, I'd be happy (relatively speaking) to pay a reasonable and fair share for the common infrastructure and defense. But my wallet is not a bottomless well that politicians can plunder to buy votes from their welfare constituents (kept on the government subsidy plantation)...and I mean BOTH the private citizens (& immigrants) on the dole (mostly Democrat supporters) AND the corporate welfare recipients (mostly Republican supporters).

In 1776, thirteen American colonies seceded from the British empire primarily over unfair taxation to become sovereign, free and independent states. In 1860-61, the people of the Southern states peacefully withdrew from the united States primarily over unfair taxation and formed a confederation with a similar Constitution (slightly improved from the original U.S. version). All Americans lost the Constitution's protection when Lincoln crushed the federal Republic as defined by the Constitution and forced the Southern states back into the new consolidated empire where the "consent of the governed" was no longer an important concept.

"If the right of secession be denied...and the denial enforced by the sword of coercion; the nature of the polity is changed, and freedom is at its end. It is no longer a government by consent, but a government of force. Conquest is substituted compact, and the dream of liberty is over." --Albert Taylor Bledsoe, from Is Davis a Traitor?

"The American people, North and South, went into the Civil War as citizens of their respective states; they came out as subjects... And what they thus lost they have never gotten back." -- H. L. Mencken

"The consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin of all that has proceeded it." --Robert E. Lee, letter to Lord Acton December 15, 1866

The myth that slavery was abolished in 1865 is ridiculous. One form of slavery ended, that is true, but the foundation was laid to create another horrendous form of slavery. Now, we are all slaves with no real say in how much of our labor we get to keep. Are we, the new slaves, willing to rise up and take back our Constitution?

Human history and American history are filled with injustices. Given human nature, we know that we cannot eliminate them from our future. There is some value---indeed, wisdom---- in recognizing our mistakes and resolving not to repeat them. Chattel slavery was wrong and is wrong where it still exists today. Within America and the rest of Western civilization, no one is arguing that chattel slavery was not wrong. It has been universally acknowledged as, to use General Robert E. Lee's words, "a moral and political evil."

Lee wrote in an 1856 letter, "There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil." Slavery was doomed as an institution in Western Christian civilization by the 1850s. Every other western nation abolished slavery without war or bloodshed. Brazil, formerly a Portuguese colony, finally abolished slavery in 1888, again, without a war.

What the present day demagogues and race-hustlers want is an apology for something that has already been acknowledged as wrong. They really just want the cash; we could skip the apology and hand over cash and they would shut up...temporarily.

The real injustice here is that they (and many Americans) are too ignorant to see that all Americans remain slaves and all the politicians who will acknowledge this fact can be counted on one hand. Furthermore, it was the bitterness resulting from "Reconstruction" that soured race relations in the South for a century and resulted in Jim Crow laws and other indignities about which they complain. Again, these too, were acknowledged as wrong and were changed.

Where is the apology for Lincoln's tyranny and the slavery his actions imposed on millions of Americans? Five million black slaves (and their descendants) were "emancipated" by the 13th Amendment's ratification so that they no longer provided unpaid labor to a master in the form of an "owner".... so that they could join the other 26 million "free people" (and their descendants) as slaves of the government. We now have over 300 million inhabitants (with an unknown number of illegal immigrants) of which there are about 35 million taxpayers (slaves).

When are we going to pound the Lincoln Memorial into gravel? When do we destroy the currency and coin that bears his ugly visage? Lincoln Mythology is so strong, even among some southerners, that I'm sure some readers will recoil at this suggestion. As Jesus said in John 8:32, "...the truth shall make you free."

To be fair, the tax slavery didn't begin until the 20th century, but Lincoln's crushing of state sovereignty and replacement of our federal republic with a consolidated national empire paved the way for all the evils that have followed including the income tax.

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, in his book "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the Civil War, makes the case for my point. The 13th Amendment (third version, not the 'Slavery Forever Amendment' or the original version) abolished chattel slavery in the United States. But the destruction of states rights and the federal Republic as a result of military conquest followed by the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank and the illegal passage (implementation without ratification) of the 14th Amendment, the questionable ratification of the 16th Amendment (income tax) and the 17th Amendment (state's right to have legislatures elect U.S. Senators rather than popular vote) have effectively enslaved ALL Americans and hobbled us with chains to make escape more difficult. We are slaves and serfs whether or not we acknowledge the fact.

Author Thomas DiLorenzo, in his essay entitled "Constitutional Futility," reaches essentially the same conclusion. DiLorenzo writes,

"If there is any lesson to be learned here, it is that constitutional liberty – in America or anywhere else – is an empty slogan unless the people possess the rights of secession and nullification. This is how the founders intended the people to be sovereign over their government. Until these powers are restored – and the Fed, the income tax, and the Seventeenth Amendment abolished – Americans have no hope of ever returning to a regime of constitutional liberty.

I don't want to conclude on a hopeless note, so allow me to remind you of the words of President Jefferson Davis, "The principle for which we contended is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form." That principle, of course, was that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The Confederate motto "Deo Vindice" means "God will Vindicate." Yes, but I believe that God expects us help ourselves. We can do it with His help.

The idea of liberty cannot be snuffed out. The U.S. empire can (and has) take away our liberties by force. But our rights and liberties are God-given and it's our duty to protect and preserve them, or to die trying. Though our Constitution is largely ignored and abused by those in D.C., it's up to us, the people, to rally under the Constitution and restore it to practice. We owe that to our ancestors and, more importantly, to our descendants. Samuel Adams expressed this thought well in his essays.

"The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv'd them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas'd them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath'd to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. — Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that 'if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event." ---Samuel Adams (From The Rights of the Colonists, page 419) [Bold emphasis is that of the author]

"Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people. They fix, too, for the people the principles of their political creed." ---Thomas Jefferson

"....But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.".... --Declaration of Independence

"Duty, then is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more; you should never wish to do less." --Robert E. Lee

If tax slavery and serfdom is finally abolished here in America, then we can celebrate a real "Day of Jubilo." I won't hold my breath for apologies from the tyrants and villains who held us in bondage. The victory of true liberty will be enough.

Adams in his essays and Jefferson in the Declaration state that it is our Duty to "throw off" such a government that fails to protect our inalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness or which wields unjust powers without the consent of the governed. The question remains, do we have the "fortitude, perseverance and resolve" to win back our rights and liberties and to maintain them against the relentless stealth and stalking of tyranny? Or will we bear "an everlasting mark of infamy" in the minds of "millions yet unborn" who will share the misery of our failure?

Copyright © 2003-2007, GeorgiaHeritageCouncil.org

On The Web: http://georgiaheritagecouncil.org/site2/commentary/scroggins-slavery-apologies031607.phtml

YOUR LINK: Click here to see your custom link.