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Published 01 October 2001 (word count: 755)
Like the actress with the frolicking follicles in the Pantene commercial who pleads, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” The D.C. crowd continues to slip us placebos for why terrorists/Soldiers for Allah/Jihad Warriors (pick one) attack us.
Our President assures us at every TV op that we’re hated because we’re a “beacon for freedom and opportunity.” Cheney offered the same Aesop Fable in his Meet the Press stint. Osama, it seems, hates us because we have “Freedom and democracy.” Pressed by Tim Russert to elaborate, he said “It must have something to do with his background, his own upbringing.” (Yeh, that’s the ticket, bin Laden hates us because he was traumatized by early potty training.) When the same Russert asked the same question on the same show a week later it was Colin Powell’s turn to mouth the same mythological fluff: “They hate our value system.”
Are you getting this? Suicidal maniacs hate us because we’re free and democratic. Because we have a bell with a crack in it and a statue of a woman holding a torch.
The real reason for this barber shop sing-along, of course, is to (1) convince us citizens/peasants/plebes (pick one) that there’s nothing wrong with their foreign policies, and (b) to convince themselves that there’s nothing wrong with their foreign policies. They’ve stirred the Middle East pot for decades like it was Grandma’s chicken soup, ignoring the fact that it’s really a cauldron of five alarm chili. They’ve backed Iraq against Iran, Iran against Iraq, Kuwait against Iraq, and Israel against everybody. They backed bin Laden and his buddies against Russia and now they want Russia to back them against bin Laden and his buddies. What’s next, backing Bluto against Popeye?
Our leaders’ obsession with empire has brought this war upon us and we have little choice now but to fight it, which we will do with all the subtlety of a rutting pig in a negligee, creating another generation of America haters for our children to deal with. And that spawn of political knee-jerk, the Office of Homeland Defense, will pursue its own jihad against the remnants of our civil rights with the same subtlety. Our children will get to know the OHD as Russians got to know the KGB.
Evil, libertarians know, is rooted neither in money nor in the love of money. Evil begins when our leaders step with impunity beyond the chalk lines of the Constitution. Yes, that document vests foreign policy in the hands of the Federal Government, and the Bill of Rights doesn’t extend to rice reapers in Vietbodia or tie-dye turban traders in Kyrgyzaturkapakahandstan. In a system of checks and balances at home, even Washington (the President, not the capitol) could do little more than warn against entangling alliances abroad. But there used to be one powerful check against playing billion dollar chess games with the lives of the world’s people; no billion dollar checks.
It’s time to bring our leaders to heel, and the only way to do that is to take their billions away. Rep. Ron Paul, former Libertarian Party presidential candidate who now sports an (R-TX) behind his name, has already given birth to H.J. Res. 45, the Liberty Amendment to repeal the income tax. We need to support it. Defiant business owners nationwide are refusing to withhold taxes from their employees. We need to encourage them. In “The Law That Never Was,” Bill Benson shows how the Sixteenth Amendment that inflicted the income tax upon us was fraudulently ratified. We need to publicize it. (Surprise! This book has been soundly refuted by groups who grow fat and powerful from slurping taxpayer pork.)
Ending the income tax may sound like a “fat chance” issue to most. But so was ending the drug war just a few years ago. Look at the momentum it’s gathering now. The fat is slowly being burned out of the chance.
A flat tax or a national sales tax is not an alternative. Merely changing the method by which the overgrown weed of government extracts its billions from us does nothing to rein in the empire builders. Every issue for every libertarian must have the same ultimate goal: forcing the genie of big government back into the bottle of the Constitution. Anything less is meaningless. We must take away their allowance and make them stand in the Constitution’s corner.
It’s a helluva commentary when fanatics kill 6,000 of your fellow citizens and you end up fearing your own government more than you fear the fanatics.
- by Garry Reed Rep. Ron Paul’s H.J. Res 45, the Liberty Amendment to abolish the income tax http://capwiz.com/liberty/issues/bills/?bill=28657
“The Law That Never Was” http://www.givemeliberty.org/features/taxes/notratified.htm
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