11. For Freedom’s Sake

CHAPTER XI

For Freedom’s Sake

REPEAL OF the Sixteenth Amendment would not be a reform; it would be a revolution.

A reform is a procedural change, an alteration in the legal ritual that does not affect the center of political power. A revolution, on the other hand, whether it is effected by violence or in an orderly fashion, is a transference of power from one group to another. An election is in effect a revolution, and so is a coup d’etat or one of those gang fights that characterize Latin-American politics. The essence of revolution is a shift in the incidence of power.

The significant revolutions of history were those that either strengthened the political establishment or whittled off some of its power. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was a major operation, because it replaced a decadent and weakening Czarism with the most powerful machine the world has ever known; not a shred of social power was left in Russia after the Bolsheviks took over. Then there was the revolution at Runnymede that resulted in the Magna Carta, an instrument that deprived the Crown of some of its prerogatives.

The American Revolution was unique in history, not because it kicked out a foreign rulership, which had been done before, but because it made possible the establishment of a government based on a new and untried principle, namely, that the government has no power except what the governed have granted it. That was a shift in power that had never occurred before.

A new American revolution was initiated in 1913, when the government was invested with the power to confiscate private property. The Amendment was not heralded as a revolution, and very few recognized it as such, but the fact is, as events have shown, that this power over the economy of the country put into the hands of the American government a means of liquidating the sovereignty of the citizenry.

As a result of income taxation, we now have a government with far more power than George III ever exercised. It is self-sufficient, independent of the will of the people. The elections do not alter that fact; these are merely periodic changes of the guard. Whoever is elected retains the power vested in the office and, as usual, tries to augment it. The end in clear sight is the liquidation of all social power and the advent of a regime of absolutism.

This, it cannot too often be repeated, was an inevitable consequence of income taxation. The citizen is sovereign only when he can retain and enjoy the fruits of his labor. If the government has first claim on his property he must learn to genuflect before it. When the right of property is abrogated, all the other rights of the individual are undermined, and to speak of the sovereign citizen who has no absolute right of property is to talk nonsense. It is like saying that the slave is free because he is allowed to do anything he wants to do (even vote, if you wish) except to own what he produces.

The proposal to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment is really a proposal to restore the sovereignty of the American citizen. To use a modern term, it is a counterrevolutionary proposal, in that it aims to restore to society the power that the Amendment gave to the government. Judging by the grumbling over income taxes—to say nothing of the wholesale evasion that even the Treasury Department admits—it would seem that the revolutionary tinder box is full and needs only leadership to ignite it. Particularly is this truculence strong among workers and housewives, professional and small businessmen; the big industrialists, bankers, and commercial interests, for the reasons aforementioned, have no reason to favor repeal. But whether this mass dissatisfaction can be channeled into a dynamic movement depends on the underlying cause of it; is it economic or spiritual?

It needs no proving that the country, the people, would be better off if income taxation were abolished. But no movement based on economic grounds alone will stir a people into action; a movement so based can be bought off.

Unless Americans want to be free, unless they put their tradition of freedom above all else, the Sixteenth Amendment will stay in the Constitution until it wrecks both the tradition and the civilization from which it emerged.

It is customary to identify the American tradition with the Declaration of Independence. Yet the Declaration merely articulated what had grown into an American thought pattern long before it was written. It had become the American ethos. John Adams, writing in 1818, put it this way: “the Revolution was in the hearts of men”… it was effected “before the war commenced.” That is to say, when Jefferson wrote about “unalienable rights” he simply put into words what Americans instinctively felt. They opposed the British Crown because they could not do otherwise.

When we try to define “Americanism”—of which there is much loose talk these days—we find it necessary to look to our beginnings for the essential ingredient. Whatever special character this country can lay claim to, it was the habit of freedom that was acquired before the country was formally organized. And it was an acquired, not an inherited characteristic, for the American was ethnologically as heterogene ous as his forebears. His ancestry gave him nothing that the peoples of Europe did not have. He had come by freedom through trouble and toil; he meant to hold on to it.

When he got around to establishing a political establishment of his own, the American had sense enough not to put too much trust in it. He had learned—without the help of a textbook on political science—that inherent in government, any government, is the tendency to rob the individual of his freedom. Hence, while recognizing the need of government for orderly gregarious living, he was against giving any setup a free hand; it must be hamstrung. The Constitution was, for that reason, that distrust of government, heavily underlined with prohibitions and with “checks and balances.”

The Constitution was tailor made for and by Americans; it was fitted to their particular habit of thought. That point was emphasized by one of its makers, Gouverneur Morris, when he was Minister to France, during the Reign of Terror. “The French,” he wrote, “want an American Constitution without reflecting that they have not American citizens to support it.”

Missing from our original Constitution was a “check” that was all the more potent because of its omission. The straight-thinking pioneer knew full well that the power of the government is in direct ratio to its income, and he was therefore all for cutting its income to the bone; that way it could not get out of hand. About all he would allow it was what it could pick up from tariffs on imports. Grudgingly, because, as Hamilton pointed out, tariffs could not produce enough to pay the running expenses of the proposed government, he allowed it some excise taxes. More than that he would not give, and more than excise and tariff taxes did not get into the Constitution.

Certainly, no tax on incomes got into the Constitution. That was unthinkable. A people that had but recently kicked over the traces because of taxes far less onerous would hardly have countenanced an income tax. They knew their freedom.

The case for repeal rests on this tradition. If there are still enough Americans who are of the opinion that that government governs best which governs least, if there is among us a group willing to risk their fortunes, their lives, and their sacred honor for freedom, then repeal has a chance. If on the other hand, the habits of mind acquired under income taxation have completely obliterated the American tradition, then any effort to restore citizen sovereignty is futile.

It is never too late to put up a fight for freedom.

Right now, even in America, the prospect for starting such a fight is unpromising. Not that the goal is unattainable, but that interest in freedom is at so low an ebb. The great enthusiasm of the times is “security”; everybody seems bent on catching this evasive will o’ the wisp, oblivious of the fact that it is beyond reach because it does not exist. There is no such thing as “security”; it is a mirage sprouting out of deep-rooted human yearning for something-for-nothing. Government, which lives and thrives on power, fosters belief in the “golden calf,” so that it can surreptitiously rob the self-mesmerized worshipers of their wealth and their dignity. It requires no great acumen to realize that what trickles out of the government’s cornucopia must be replaced by labor. But reflection is foreclosed by the madness that has come over us. The national passion is for handouts, no matter what the cost. Freedom, which puts a premium on self-reliance, is in short demand. Why put up a fight for it?

The rank and file, those whose principal preoccupation is with the problem of existence, are in no mood to argue with the beneficent State; they are for letting well enough alone. Those Americans who have pretensions to over-average capacities are also quite willing to put their self-esteem on the barrelhead. The entrepreneur whose venture would not exist but for government loans or government contracts readily makes peace with government regulation. So long as government bonds pay interest, the banker will not quarrel with government intervention. The farmer does not object to a meddlesome federal agent who brings him a gratuity, and the professor who lives by subsidie s will write books in praise of the subsidizing State.

Who wants freedom?

In the circumstances, those who put a value on freedom, who know that the loss of interest in freedom is the sure mark of national and individual decadence, are in deep despair. Many, too many, have resigned themselves to what they call the inevitable. Let the country have its bellyful of socialism, they say, and be done with the struggle to stop it. The human animal can adjust itself to any condition that permits him a meal and a mate; Americans are no different from any other people that in times past have swapped their souls for a mess of pottage. They, too, will find that the only “security” is that provided by a penal institution, but by the time they find it out they will have made their adjustment to prison bars and barbed wire. After a century or two of that kind of living, some Moses will come along to remind them that they are in fact men, and a new exodus to freedom will be started. By that time, these prophets of gloom maintain, and not without good reason, the State itself will be in a starved condition and unable to stop the exodus. A handful of resolute men will easily topple it over.

There is historic support for such resignation. Every civilization on record has followed the same pattern. In the beginning, the civilization rose and flourished in the sunshine of freedom. And, in the beginning, the civilization was poor. Always some kind of government attached itself to society, but because of the general lack of goods, the government remained quiescent and even rendered service in the maintenance of order.

But the human urge is always away from poverty, and that urge, while it improves his circumstances and widens his horizon, also is man’s downfall. As soon as a general abundance appears, the passion for power is enflamed, and the political establishment changes its character; it gradually shifts its position from a protective to a predatory institution. It levies taxes. And the more the general economy improves the larger its levies, always, of course, in the “general interest.” So it was in the time of the Caesars, so it is now.

The general welfare is not improved by the increasing load of taxation. On the contrary, the upward climb of civilization is retarded in exact proportion to the levies, and when they reach the point of discouraging production, the parabola of civilization turns downward.

Returning to first principles, the object of productive effort is consumption; men work to satisfy their desires, and for no other reason. They don’t want work, they want satisfactions. Their aversion to labor is such that they are constantly inventing labor-saving devices. And the more labor they save the more labor they invest in the gratification of new desires, of which the human mind seems to have an inexhaustible fund. Contrariwise, when the results of their efforts are taken from them, when the prospect of possession and enjoyment is diminished, they lose interest in producing. Why work when there is nothing in it? And this disinterest in production arises whether the insecurity of ownership is caused by regular visits from marauders or tax collectors. The name or the uniform of the absconder makes no difference to the one deprived of his property; he sees no point in trying to improve his circumstances, in widening his horizon; his point of interest is mere existence. That is civilization in decline.

When faced with this circumstance, does the State abdicate? It does not. The general lack of interest in production threatens its own existence, but it still cannot divest itself of its inner urge for power. It turns to the use of force to stimulate the production from which it derives taxes. It confiscates and tries to run the entire economy by rules, regulations, controls, and compulsion; the nation becomes a slave-labor camp. But the output of an economy that rests on force rather than on self-interest is meager. More important than lack of production is the slave psychology that such an environment induces. Men lose their capacity for self-improvement along with their sense of individual dignity. Thus civilization disintegrates and becomes an historical or archaeological curio. The State, of course, collapses with the civilization.

Must our civilization follow in the same groove? There are prophets who so maintain. For about three centuries, they point out, that bit of modern civilization called America thrived under the life-giving rays of freedom; now it is entering into the usual regime of absolutism. The end is in sight, and the end, they say, will come much more quickly than did, for instance, the end of the Roman civilization, simply because our great advances in technology will hasten it. We move much faster these days, even toward our decline. The event that will bring about a complete collapse of freedom in America, and the civilization that grew up under it, will be the next world war; the State will, under fear of annihilation from the enemy, confiscate all that remains of social power. After the war, as usual, it will not give up the power it has thus confiscated—in fact, the bewildered and war-impoverished people will insist on the State retaining that power and using it for the “general welfare”—and in short order even the memory of freedom will have been lost.

Maybe so. Maybe our civilization must obey the “ineluctable” forces of history; maybe it is on the toboggan now. Nevertheless, men do what they are impelled by their natures to do, not by what history dictates. The stars in the heavens attend to their eternal business, while we mortals must travel within our own specific orbits.

It was no historical imperative that directed the pens of those who signed the Declaration of Independence; it was an inner force. There were many at the time—the Tories— who deemed the Revolution a foolhardy venture, from which no good could come greater than that which might ensue from a compromise with King George; if they were alive today these Tories could point to Canada in support of their argument. Nevertheless, the rebels, none of whom were driven to it by economic necessity, put their signatures to what at the time seemed to be their own death warrant. Why? For lack of a better answer, let us say they were made of a peculiar kind of stuff and could not do otherwise.

Whether there are any mystic forces pushing men along a path from which there is no escape, is a moot question. But there is no questioning the fact that throughout history men have regularly made excursions in quest of freedom, and that every one of these excursions was identified by its leadership. It is a logical inference therefore that when men of that stripe appear on the scene the cause of freedom is not neglected. Perhaps, after all, the present plight of freedom in America is due to lack of leadership.

If, for instance, those who prate about “free enterprise” were willing to risk bankruptcy for it, even as the men of the Declaration risked their necks for independence, the present drive for the collectivization of capital would not have such easy going. Assuming that they are fully aware of the implications of the phrase they mouth, and are sincere in their protestations, the fact that they are unwilling to suffer mortification of the flesh disqualifies them for leadership, and the case for “free enterprise” is hopeless.

The present low estate of freedom in this country must be laid to lack of the proper leadership—to men who know what freedom is and who do not equate it with their own “standard of living.” Whether or not leadership could have averted, or can still stop, the trend toward socialism, may be open to question; that a glorious fight for freedom might yet enliven the American scene is not. Whether a fight for freedom will be crowned with success, is less important than the fight itself, for if nothing comes of it, the improvement in the spirit of the fighters will be a gain, and they cannot help but keep alive the values that will make America a better climate for their offspring to live in.

There is no accounting for the emergence of these superior men, these “sports of nature,” who sporadically shape the course of mankind. They come, as it were, from nowhere, and nobody has yet conclusively explained their advent. But, they come. When in her own time and her own pleasure Nature deems America ready for and worthy of them, she will give us the men who will make the good fight. It seems reasonable to assume that their first objective will be— Repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment.