Out of humor comes some of the most serious of ideas.
An excellent example of this is Craig T. Nelson’s appearance
on the Glenn Beck program here:
Obviously, it’s nothing new that the Government steals our
money to dump countless useless programs onto us. Programs that we have no
interest in or need for. But stopping to think about this, we have to ask: is
there anything we can do about it?
This issue goes much deeper than merely electing the
wasteful spenders and anti-capitalists that feed on our votes and tax dollars
to simultaneously line their own wallets and fund the wonderful programs that
countless Americans have come to depend on—such as swine odor research. The
issue is the fact that our Government somehow has the right to steal from
citizens and use the money in whatever ludicrous manner it sees fit. The issue
is the 16th Amendment.
For those readers who were unaware, the Federal Government
was actually not permitted to even levy income taxes until 1913. Astounding,
isn’t it? Our Nation survived for 137 years without a single tax dollar.
Shouldn’t that make us think? Shouldn’t that remind us that most of the
“services” that the Federal Government provides are completely superfluous?
Think about it: all that the Fed really needs to do is keep the money
circulating and maintain the military. That is revenue that can come through
other means; including banks, tariffs on foreign countries, or even State
funds. There is very little need for the punishment of taxation to ever fall to
the individual.
I bring up the expendability of the 16th
Amendment, not because I think there is a snowball’s chance in Hell that it
will be repealed in my lifetime, but rather because I want our legislators to
start thinking much more carefully about how to apply the Amendment’s power.
A tax of any size is a punishment. Denying this is idiotic.
You want services from the Government, and they take from you to pay for said
services. That is the way it works. However, what we must remember is that all possible functions of government are those functions that
the people yield to the government. We could, theoretically, privately protect
and defend ourselves without Government help, but we allow the Government to
protect us through police and a military so that we don’t all have to be
on-call militiamen. We could all provide for ourselves, but some people demand
government assistance, so we have welfare programs. We could all simply divide
our paychecks intelligently and save a percentage for our own retirement, but
we have the government do it for us in the form of Social Security.
The point is this: we yielded power to the
Government. We should be aware of our ever-present option to take it back. And
we should all be willing to do so if the Government continues to buy out
failing companies and failing States against our will. What we are seeing is a
Government that is not, at this time, serving our best interests. We are seeing
Government inflate to unprecedented sizes because we are failing to stop it. We
are seeing Government steal our money and use it in ways that we disapprove of.
This is dictatorship. It is only communism in which people cannot lay claim to
their own property—remember, your money is your property.
Start thinking, America. Start thinking about
taking your property back.