Rodent Regatta

Has the U.S. Crossed the Line Into Oppression?
by Craig J. Cantoni

It is easy to identify oppression in the extreme. Think of Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Pol Pot and Mao. It is not so easy, however, to identify less extreme kinds of oppression or to know when a government has crossed the line that separates liberty from oppression.

For instance, the Third Reich crossed the line long before Jews were incinerated in furnaces. It crossed the line around the time that it banned non-Jews from shopping in Jewish stores, thus depriving Jews of part of their income.

Has the United States crossed the line into oppression?

I am not raising the question because of the Patriot Act, the recent Supreme Court decision that limits political speech, the jackbooted SWAT teams that break down doors looking for dopers, the state harassment of cigarette smokers, the granting of privileges to some races over other races, the fining of drivers who don’t wear seat belts, the searching of automobiles under false pretenses, the expansion of federal power way beyond the enumerated powers in the Constitution, or other examples of what some people believe are abuses of state power.

I’m raising the question because of something that most people do not equate with oppression: taxes. To be more specific, I’m asking if the United States has crossed a line with respect to taxes that separates a free people from an oppressed people.

Almost all Americans would agree that the government wouild be oppressive if it confiscated 100 percent of income in taxes. But at what level of taxation below 100 percent does oppression begin and liberty end? At 75 percent? At 50 percent? At 25 percent? Surveys show that the majority of Americans in all socioeconomic classes think that taxes should not be higher than 25 percent.

Then what about 53 percent, which is how much of the year that the average American has to work to pay the cost of government at the federal, state and local levels? Is that over the line?

Some might look to the Constitution for an answer, but they won’t find it there.

Although the greatest political document ever written limits government power in other important ways, it does not limit how much of your money the government can take in taxes. You have such constitutional rights as freedom of speech, religion and self-defense. In addition, the government is prohibited from taking your land and house under eminent domain unless the taking is for a public use and you are reimbursed for the loss. But there is nothing in the Constitution or its Bill of Rights that would stop the government from taxing your income at 100 percent.

For example, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and indentured servitude in 1865. However, the amendment refers to the kind of indentured servitude that had its beginning on these shores in the early 17th century, when Europeans signed voluntary contracts with the Virginia Company to work for a specified time, often under draconian terms, to pay for their voyage across the Atlantic. It does not refer to today’s form of indentured servitude, in which citizens can be forced to work for the government for however long the government says they have to work for the government.

Or take the Sixteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1913 and authorized the government to tax income. It does not limit taxes. In fact, it opened the tax flood gates.

What about Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which authorizes Congress to levy taxes? Doesn’t that put a limit on taxes, since Congress is elected to office and has to bend to the will of the people? No, that doesn’t limit taxes. All it does is give the majority of voters (who are a minority of citizens) the right to tax everyone else at whatever level they want. If you are in the minority, you are powerless to stop those in the majority from taking your money for themselves. And if you resist, the government has the legal authority to throw you in jail.

You are even powerless to stop powerful special-interest groups that are not in the majority from stealing your money through taxation. Take seniors, who comprise about 35 percent of registered voters. They were able to pass the new Medicare bill that will place a tax burden on your children. For all practical purposes, you have no defense against the theft and are powerless to protect your children.

You also have no defense against others who receive income, subsidies, grants and loans at your expense, including Iowa farmers, sugar growers, unemployed ship builders in Philadelphia, mass transit riders, SSI recipients who scam the system, wealthy homeowners who build homes in flood plains or in the middle of tinderbox forests, and millions of other fellow citizens who have government agents take your money for their own benefit and convenience or because of their own stupid choices.

It is the great failing of the Framers of the Constitution that there is no line in the Constitution between liberty and oppression with respect to taxation. Of course, the Framers lived in an agrarian society in which wealth was represented mostly by land, not by numbers on a paycheck or electronic digits in a bank account. They could not imagine today’s industrial society in which so much wealth is not in land and is so easily expropriated by government agents.

Because it is subject to different interpretations, the Framers missed a chance to draw a clear line with the General Welfare clause of Article I, Section 8. Many constitutional scholars believe that the Framers did draw such a line, because it would have been contradictory for them to spell out the enumerated powers of the government and then to write the General Welfare clause to mean that the government can levy taxes for more than the enumerated powers. But other scholars use correspondence between the Framers after the Constitution was written to show that even they had different opinions about what the clause meant.

If the clause means—as I think it should mean—that taxes should only be levied against all citizens equally for government services that benefit all citizens equally, such as national defense, then there would be little chance that taxes would result in oppression. Why? Because people are not prone to vote to tax themselves into oppression but are prone to vote to tax others into oppression.

So, if the line cannot be found in the Constitution, where can it be found? It can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which of course spells out oppression in detail, including this grievance against the King of Great Britain: ”He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.” Or this: He has imposed ”Taxes on us without our Consent.”

Did your child consent to pay the prescription bills of seniors? Did you consent to have 53 percent of your income taken by the government?

The Declaration also spells out the right of the people to alter or abolish an oppressive government and to institute a new government that respects the inalienable rights of life, liberty and happiness.

Have we reached that point? Has the United States crossed the line?

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com