While inferring the “strained” Southern argument for apportionment in Federalist #54, James Madison outlines three criteria applicable to slaves:
In being compelled to labor, not for himself, but for a master; in being vendible by one master to another master; and in being subject at all times to be restrained in his liberty and chastised in his body, by the capricious will of another — the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank…
Hmmm… two out of the three chracteristics of slavery seem adequately fulfilled by our present income taxes. Who has first claim on your labor? Who can put you in prison or otherwise “chastise [your] body” for failing to give your labor FIRST in its service? That you are not—yet—”vendible” by this master is the only manner in which income taxation fails the benchmarks of slavery mentioned by Madison.
Ironic that the first successful efforts to implement both the incremental involuntary servitude of income taxation and the absolute involuntary servitude of compulsory military service were implemented by… Abraham Lincoln.
Both income taxation and compulsory military service were eschewed by the Founders in their Constitutional deliberations for very good reasons. Among them, concerning taxation, is something very like what we have today in our inconcievably large (in the Founders’ day) Republic with a nearly universal suffrage—specifically avoided by the Framers!—which has resulted in a set of circumstances the Framers wished ardently to avoid (read Madison’s exposition in Federalist #10). As Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker wrote for The Claremont Institute in 2002 in Regressive Thoughts on a Progressive Tax, citing the Founders views,
“Given the fact that the poor everywhere outnumber the rich, political philosophy had held that a government based on majority rule was likely to lead to the misappropriation of the property of the few rich by the many poor.”
/sarcasm/ No, really?
*sigh*
We do not have the Founders’ Republic any more. Don’t believe me? Just read the Constitution, really read it. It’s a relatively short document—kinda long for a blogpost *s*, but still relatively short—written in fairly simple terms.
Here’s an idea: how about pressuring your congresscritters for a return to at least a shadow of the Republic the Founders envisioned by ditching the abhorrent income tax?
It’s doable, folks. For a start:
The FairTax.
