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Taxation
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SPECIAL REPORT: INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, TAXATION AND THE PROPER ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
This essay is the second in a week-long series that contrasts the
Founding Father's original intent with today's culture and politics.
To read more on social progress and the Founders subscribe to Fusion
magazine and read Glenn Beck's exclusive Voter's Guide. On sale now
(https://members.premiereinteractive.com/ows-img/glennbeck/pages/28585/41414.html)!
Individual Rights, Taxation and the Proper Role of Government
By C. Bradley Thompson
How shall government in a free society raise revenue to pay for its
legitimate functions and services? This question has long vexed
Americans, and their answer to it has changed dramatically over time.
How one thinks about taxes depends more fundamentally on how one
thinks about the nature and purpose of government which in turn
depends on how one thinks about the rights of individuals. Taxation
is a social barometer measuring the degree to which a society is
prosperous or poor, free or enslaved, good or evil.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans had a very different
conception of government than we do today. At the time of the
American Revolution, the American people believed that the sole
purpose of government was the protection of individual rights - the
rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.
Various attempts by the British Parliament during the 1760s and '70s
to tax the colonists without their consent provoked the Americans to
revolt, to declare their independence from Great Britain, and to
develop a radically new conception of government founded on the moral
principle of man's rights.
American Revolutionaries understood "rights" to mean freedom from the
arbitrary initiation of physical force, which means the right and the
freedom to act in order to acquire, possess, use and trade property.
The Founders thought it right that a man be free to choose and pursue
the actions necessary to support his life; they thought it right that
he keep the property that he has created to support his life, and
they thought it right that he benefit from and enjoy the fruits of
his labor.
Building on that moral foundation, America's Founding Fathers created
a revolutionary political system that institutionalized the
protection of each and every individual's rights as the only proper
moral purpose of government. The Framers of the Constitution took
great pains to create a government of limited powers, including if
not most especially, limits on the government's power to tax. Not
one Founding Father thought the federal government (or any government
for that matter) should have the power to tax at will.
The Founders understood that the taxing power is one of government's
most potentially abusive powers, and so they took steps to limit and
control its reach. Most importantly, they set up constitutional
controls over both taxing and spending. The primary control on
excessive taxation came in the form of limitations on Congress's
spending power. The proper functions of government created by the
Constitution of 1787 were mostly limited to national defense,
internal police, and a system of courts. Limited spending meant
limited taxes.
In his First Inaugural Address, Thomas Jefferson summed up the
Founders view of government and the basic political-economic
principles of the American creed in these terms:
A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring
one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their
own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the
mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good
government.
Under the Founders' constitution, taxes were limited to duties on
foreign imports and the occasional sales tax on things such as
alcohol, carriages, sugar and tobacco. This view of the relationship
between rights, limited government and taxes lasted for well over a
hundred years.
The Founders' system of natural liberty allowed each man to choose
his path in life, to run his life as he saw best fit, to reap what he
sowed confident that the fruits of his labor would not be taken from
him and given to someone else, and to rise as high as his ability
would take him. Shockingly (at least to us in the 21st century),
such men lived without government officers, inspectors, regulators
and social workers. They lived without welfare, Medicare, Medicaid,
social security, regulatory agencies such as the FDA, SEC, FCC and
government schools, which means they lived virtually free of taxes.
The free society created by our Founding Fathers was dramatically
altered in 1913 with the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment and the
introduction of the progressive income tax.
At the heart of the progressive income tax is the MarChristian moral
principle, which says: "From each according to his ability, to each
according to his need." In other words, the progressive income tax
tells working Americans that they have a moral duty to work for those
who don't.
In 2008, Americans stand at a great distance from those daring
Revolutionaries who rebelled against Great Britain's tyranny of
taxation. Our Federal Tax Code runs to 66,000 pages and Tax Freedom
Day (the day in the year when one stops working for the government
and gets to keep what is earned) has moved from January 22 in 1900 to
April 23 in 2008. This means that most Americans spend almost four
months a year working full-time for the government. Surely the
Founding Fathers would have thought a progressive income tax the
harbinger if not the very definition of tyranny and enslavement.
In this election year, we might ask our politicians to tell us why we
should think them wiser and more just than Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams.
C. Bradley Thompson is the Executive Director of the Clemson
Institute for the Study of Capitalism, Professor of Political Science
at Clemson University, and the author of the award-winning John Adams
and the Spirit of Liberty
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700611819?ie=UTF8&tag=glennbeckcom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0700611819).
This essay is the second in a week-long series that contrasts the
Founding Father's original intent with today's culture and politics.
To read more on social progress and the Founders subscribe to Fusion
magazine and read Glenn Beck's exclusive Voter's Guide. On sale now
(https://members.premiereinteractive.com/ows-img/glennbeck/pages/28585/41414.html)!
Individual Rights, Taxation and the Proper Role of Government
By C. Bradley Thompson
How shall government in a free society raise revenue to pay for its
legitimate functions and services? This question has long vexed
Americans, and their answer to it has changed dramatically over time.
How one thinks about taxes depends more fundamentally on how one
thinks about the nature and purpose of government which in turn
depends on how one thinks about the rights of individuals. Taxation
is a social barometer measuring the degree to which a society is
prosperous or poor, free or enslaved, good or evil.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans had a very different
conception of government than we do today. At the time of the
American Revolution, the American people believed that the sole
purpose of government was the protection of individual rights - the
rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.
Various attempts by the British Parliament during the 1760s and '70s
to tax the colonists without their consent provoked the Americans to
revolt, to declare their independence from Great Britain, and to
develop a radically new conception of government founded on the moral
principle of man's rights.
American Revolutionaries understood "rights" to mean freedom from the
arbitrary initiation of physical force, which means the right and the
freedom to act in order to acquire, possess, use and trade property.
The Founders thought it right that a man be free to choose and pursue
the actions necessary to support his life; they thought it right that
he keep the property that he has created to support his life, and
they thought it right that he benefit from and enjoy the fruits of
his labor.
Building on that moral foundation, America's Founding Fathers created
a revolutionary political system that institutionalized the
protection of each and every individual's rights as the only proper
moral purpose of government. The Framers of the Constitution took
great pains to create a government of limited powers, including if
not most especially, limits on the government's power to tax. Not
one Founding Father thought the federal government (or any government
for that matter) should have the power to tax at will.
The Founders understood that the taxing power is one of government's
most potentially abusive powers, and so they took steps to limit and
control its reach. Most importantly, they set up constitutional
controls over both taxing and spending. The primary control on
excessive taxation came in the form of limitations on Congress's
spending power. The proper functions of government created by the
Constitution of 1787 were mostly limited to national defense,
internal police, and a system of courts. Limited spending meant
limited taxes.
In his First Inaugural Address, Thomas Jefferson summed up the
Founders view of government and the basic political-economic
principles of the American creed in these terms:
A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring
one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their
own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the
mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good
government.
Under the Founders' constitution, taxes were limited to duties on
foreign imports and the occasional sales tax on things such as
alcohol, carriages, sugar and tobacco. This view of the relationship
between rights, limited government and taxes lasted for well over a
hundred years.
The Founders' system of natural liberty allowed each man to choose
his path in life, to run his life as he saw best fit, to reap what he
sowed confident that the fruits of his labor would not be taken from
him and given to someone else, and to rise as high as his ability
would take him. Shockingly (at least to us in the 21st century),
such men lived without government officers, inspectors, regulators
and social workers. They lived without welfare, Medicare, Medicaid,
social security, regulatory agencies such as the FDA, SEC, FCC and
government schools, which means they lived virtually free of taxes.
The free society created by our Founding Fathers was dramatically
altered in 1913 with the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment and the
introduction of the progressive income tax.
At the heart of the progressive income tax is the MarChristian moral
principle, which says: "From each according to his ability, to each
according to his need." In other words, the progressive income tax
tells working Americans that they have a moral duty to work for those
who don't.
In 2008, Americans stand at a great distance from those daring
Revolutionaries who rebelled against Great Britain's tyranny of
taxation. Our Federal Tax Code runs to 66,000 pages and Tax Freedom
Day (the day in the year when one stops working for the government
and gets to keep what is earned) has moved from January 22 in 1900 to
April 23 in 2008. This means that most Americans spend almost four
months a year working full-time for the government. Surely the
Founding Fathers would have thought a progressive income tax the
harbinger if not the very definition of tyranny and enslavement.
In this election year, we might ask our politicians to tell us why we
should think them wiser and more just than Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams.
C. Bradley Thompson is the Executive Director of the Clemson
Institute for the Study of Capitalism, Professor of Political Science
at Clemson University, and the author of the award-winning John Adams
and the Spirit of Liberty
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700611819?ie=UTF8&tag=glennbeckcom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0700611819).