He has some excellent essays on individualism in both “Fugitive Essays” and “One Is A Crowd”.

And very relevant for today is his “Income Tax: The Root of All Evil” where he details how the State maintains its power via confiscation of people’s labor.

I would like to see the Tea Parties become more about abolishing taxes altogether and less about simply how much government is spending. The latter battle will never be won without abolishing the 16th Amendment.

[So true; and thanks for the great titles; I know our readers are always hungry for those.–IM]

To answer your other points. We are outnumbered so, leaving any other issues aside, active resistance is not a good strategy. Those who do so will be labeled terrorists and squashed like bugs.

Violence is a last resort as it was with the Patriots. We need to try out the direct action steps I spelled out while also converting more people to our cause. When we have more folks on our side, more strategic options become available.

Don’t overlook the power of juries. No one can be tossed into a federal prison unless a jury says okay.

And remember the Patriot pledge–“by peaceful means if at all possible.”

• War means high taxes.
• Taxes mean invasion of privacy.
• To steal your money and violate your privacy, the government must disarm you first.
• You have the natural right to resist tyranny.
• Gun control was the proximate cause of the American Revolution.
• America was born in an act of resistance to gun control!

More specifically, America was born in a violent act of resistance to gun control. British authorities came to seize guns and the colonists paid them in lead. I’ve just read Mr. Ostrowski’s essay twice, and I have to say that exactly how he thinks we can win this revolution peacefully (and enact his laundry-list of government-killing measures) escapes me. He shows us that the American nation was born in an instant of violence and then dismisses out of hand the notion of using violence to win it back. His solution is a peaceful “direct citizen action,” which seems to amount to not voting, buying goods from businesses which fly the appropriate flag, serving on juries and speaking your mind about politics.

Meanwhile, the pro-amnesty demonstrations of 2006 attracted millions of people nationwide. Obama is poised to legalize some 20 million Mestizos, every one of which thinks that the state exists to provide for him. And thanks to universal suffrage, every one will have a vote equal to yours. Each day more alien people of alien cultures arrive at our doorstep, and you will never persuade them to your cause in significant numbers, no matter what “education” you provide them. They simply don’t think the way we do. If they did, there would be robust republics abroad, and they wouldn’t need to come here.

If I’m somehow misreading this whole thing, I hope someone will set me straight. Otherwise, though I sympathize with the overall aim, I view the tea parties as quaint and more than a little naive. If you think you can win back the country using purely economic arguments while disregarding things like common culture and race, you’ve already lost.

I am tempted to say, enough with the tea parties. Let the Revolution begin!