‘Sixteen the Number of the Beast’

Individual Rights,Private Property,Taxation

            

(The title of the post is that of an essay on the 16th Amendment in Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With a Corrupt Culture.)

A self-satisfied, beaming U.S. Marshal, Stephen Monier, boasted about busting the elderly tax resisters, Ed and Elaine Brown. “They invited us in, and we escorted them out,” Monier strutted, as he described the ruse the feds used to gain access to the couple’s home. At least the feds didn’t kill the Browns.

Doug Powers covered the story here.

Income tax is immoral, not illegal. Most of what the federal government does is immoral, but not illegal. After all, those in power determine what’s licit and what’s elicit. As I’ve written:

“…the right of ownership is an extension of the right to life. If ownership is not an absolute right but is instead subject to the vagaries of majority vote, then so is the right to life…
However you slice it, there is no moral difference between a lone burglar who steals stuff he doesn’t own and an “organized society” that does the same. In a just society, the moral strictures that apply to the individual must also apply to the collective. A society founded on natural rights must not finesse theft.
The Founders intended for government to safeguard man’s natural rights. The 16th Amendment gave government a limitless lien on a man’s property and, by extension, on his life. The Amendment turned government into the almighty source – rather than the protector – of man’s rights and Americans into indentured slaves.”

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