April 15, the date by which American citizens scramble to file their federal income tax returns and pay their income taxes, serves as a discomforting reminder of America’s past: the fact that Americans didn’t do this type of thing for some 125 years after the enactment of the Constitution.
That’s not because income taxes are some sort of new invention that 20th-century Americans came up with. It doesn’t take a political rocket scientist to figure out that one good way for government to get money is by seizing a portion of people’s income. In fact, grabbing the fruits of people’s earnings has always been a well-established way for government to get its money, especially tyrannical governments, which always seem to be in need of ever-increasing amounts of money.
When the American people called the federal government into existence, they were fully aware of income taxation as a way to fund it. They rejected it. They did not want this way of life for America — that is, a way of life in which people would be scrambling to pay their taxes and file their file income tax returns every year, especially out of fear of a agency like the Internal Revenue Service, a tyrannical agency that actually wields and exercises the power to destroy people.
In the minds of our ancestors, that way of life wasn’t consistent with the fundamental principles of a free society. As far as they were concerned, a genuinely free society was one in which people are free to keep everything they earn and decide for themselves what to do with it.
They rejected the notion of mandatory, coercive charity that later Americans would come to embrace — that is, charity that comes at the point of a government gun. In their minds, real charity can only come from the willing heart of the individual. When people are forced to care for others, our American ancestors believed, that makes for a tyrannical society, as well as a society where conscience is stultified.
It’s not a coincidence that our American ancestors rejected such mandatory, coercive welfare-state programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidies, bailouts, education grants, public housing, food stamps, foreign aid, and all of the socialistic programs that later Americans enthusiastically embraced. Given that all those programs are based on the concept of governmentally forced caring for others, early Americans would have nothing to do with them.
They also rejected the notions of a permanent standing army, a CIA, and a NSA, along with imperialism, interventionism, foreign military bases, NATO, SEATO, CENTO, ANZUS, ASEAN, OAS, and all other alliances with foreign regimes. Our ancestors believed in an independent America, one that wasn’t entangled in foreign alliances, especially ones that automatically sent the nation into war without congressional debate and a congressional declaration of war.
They also rejected the notion of a government-managed and government-regulated economy. For them, the term “free enterprise” meant an economic system where enterprise was free from government management and control. They also rejected the drug war as well as immigration controls, two federal programs that have required ever-increasing amounts of money to fund.
Our ancestors obviously didn’t need an income tax, given that they didn’t have the type of welfare-warfare system that needs all that tax revenue. No welfare-warfare state means no need for income taxation.
Statists today argue that the welfare-warfare state way of life has proven to be beneficial to Americans and, therefore, that the income tax was worth it.
Not so. Actually, the income tax, along with the coercive system of charity and the military empire it funds, has been the great destroyer of freedom, prosperity, peace, and harmony.
The statists say: “Look at that poor person over there. Yesterday, he was struggling and today he has a $1,000 that the government has given to him. See how the welfare state benefits people.”
That’s what is seen. What is unseen is the mindset of governmental dependency and entitlement that the recipient of the dole now has. In his mind, it’s now his right to forcibly take other people’s money and live off of it. And over time he becomes convinced that he could never survive without his dole.
Look at Social Security recipients. They are a perfect example of what the welfare state has done to people. Social Security recipients don’t give a whit about how much young people are struggling, in large part because of the enormous tax burden imposed on them. All that matters to seniors is, “Keep giving us our dole because we put it in and, therefore, we have a right to take it out. And anyway we couldn’t survive without it.”
It would be difficult to find a better example of what the dole system has done to people’s sense of morality, conscience, independence, self-reliance, and can-do. And of course there is also the effect on conscience, as reflected by people’s indifference to the fact that they are using government force to take other people’s money so that they can live off of it.
And think about the destruction of all that productive capital that would have come into existence had people been free to keep their own money. It’s capital that ultimately raises people’s standard of living. The more income that government seizes, the poorer that society will be.
Look also at the warfare-state side of things. All that it has produced is perpetual conflict, tension, hostility, fear, anxiety, and, of course, ever-increasing expenditures for the national-security establishment part of the federal government — the part that our American ancestors rejected, lock, stock, and barrel.
Ironically, both sets of Americans — those who lived with income taxation and a welfare-warfare state and those who live with such systems are convinced that they have lived in free societies. Obviously they can’t both be right since they have lived in opposite systems. That brings to mind the famous quote by Johann von Goethe: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
