Obama regularly scorns "giving a tax cut" to the wrong sorts of people, as if allowing them to keep more of their own money were a gift. On the flipside, Obama has declared that people have a "right to health care," as if coercing goods and services from other people were an inherent right.
I know it hurts, but think for a moment. Obama is claiming that you have a greater right to other people's property than your own. The only way anyone can espouse this nonsense is if he rejects the notion of property itself, i.e., if he is a socialist. No amount of eloquent rhetoric or mastery of details by Obama can obscure this fundamental truth, and the fact that a man such as this may assume the presidency means America has gone through the looking glass. The virtues we once embraced are now vices, and the vices we once condemned are now virtues. This is not the America I fell in love with when I was growing up, and it's certainly not the America I want to bid farewell to when I die.
5 comments:
For as long as we've had federal income taxes, we've had a progressive tax; wealthier people always have paid a greater percentage of their income than the poor.
Before 1862, we relied on tariffs, sales tax, and taxes on capital gains. In 1862, people who made from $600 to $10k paid 3% of their income. Those who made more than $10k paid at a greater rate. Both the inheritance tax and a version of the IRS also began at this time.
Between the Civil War and 1913, we returned to the previous system. In 1913, we adopted the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, and the rest is history.
Since the 1890s we've had social services. Before these "socialist" programs that fed, clothed, and cared for the lower class, American factories literally worked their immigrant and black employees to death. Orphans littered the streets.
Orphanages take your money and give it to others, provide them with health care, etc.
I guess by your definition, this country has been socialist for a long time!
The term "socialist" gets wielded pretty arbitrarily nowadays to serve a party's or candidate's political agenda. And it reeks of obsolete Cold-War fears. It's become a meaningless term that conservatives use to denounce other Americans as "un-American."
Congratulations, that was an answer worthy of Barack Obama himself -- you completely ignored my point. I never equated the existence of the income tax with socialism. Instead, I noted how Obama believes that letting someone keep more of his own money is a "gift," whereas he believes that taking someone else's money is a "right." This is a paradoxical assertion that reveals an unspoken premise, i.e., that a man's money does not belong to him in the first place, but rather belongs to the political sector to dispense with as it chooses. That is socialism.
And yes, it is true that the U.S. has flirted with socialistic policies for quite some time. The purpose of taxation is to finance the narrow functions of the federal government, not to impose a social leveling or to re-distribute wealth among private citizens, objectives that fall far outside any power that the federal government can claim under the Constitution. As I have often stated, the States may re-distribute wealth in this manner if their respective citizens choose to do so. My focus is on the federal government's unlawful practice of exceeding its enumerated powers.
And as we've discussed before, the fact that the full program of socialism has not been implemented does nothing to obviate the existence of policies with a socialistic nature. You can tend towards an asymptote without reaching it. Moreover, I never claimed that Obama is bringing socialism to our shores -- he is merely throwing gasoline on the fire.
As to the Sixteenth Amendment, there is nothing in its language that authorizes the federal government to spend in newfangled ways not found in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. It is a revenue booster, not a spending booster, so it has no relevancy to this discussion.
If you wish to dabble in the history of the income tax, take the time to read the Supreme Court's opinion in Pollock v. Farmer's Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429 (1895). The Court held that a direct tax on incomes is unconstitutional if it is not apportioned across the entire country as required by Article 1, Section 2. Indirect taxes such as excises and tariffs -- which the taxpayer can choose to avoid -- do not need to be apportioned this way. Now here's the interesting part: the Sixteenth Amendment does not say whether it is a direct or indirect tax on incomes. It says simply that no apportionment is necessary for collecting the income tax. Under an honest reading of the Constitution, this means that the income tax must be categorized as indirect -- since that's the only type of tax that doesn't need to be apportioned -- and therefore the tax is in the nature of an excise on discretionary profits that the taxpayer can avoid. Sadly, and as is customary, the Supreme Court and the rest of the feds have ignored this and imposed a direct, non-discretionary tax on all Americans without the apportionment required by Article I, Section 2. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that wartime measures such as the income tax never go away, even long after the war is over.
I should have quoted the passage I was responding to. My bad. My response was to this passage in your post:
"Obama is claiming that you have a greater right to other people's property than your own. The only way anyone can espouse this nonsense is if he rejects the notion of property itself, i.e., if he is a socialist."
The history I presented was merely to support this response to your passage:
"I guess by your definition, this country has been socialist for a long time!
"The term 'socialist' gets wielded pretty arbitrarily nowadays to serve a party's or candidate's political agenda. And it reeks of obsolete Cold-War fears. It's become a meaningless term that conservatives use to denounce other Americans as 'un-American.'"
I hope the context clarifies the relevance of my reply.
By the way, there's no rule that says I have to respond to the crux of your argument. I chose not to because I don't buy into your description of social programs. I don't see the expenditure of tax revenue on social programs to equate with a redistribution of wealth.
By the way, I know you don't believe the Constitution is a "living document," but I don't understand how you can give credence to what one Supreme Court decided in 1895, but not to what another Supreme Court decides today.
So you aren't trying to respond to the point I actually made. At least now I understand why your comment confused me. Although this makes me doubt whether responding any further serves a purpose, I'll give it one more try.
Of course the Constitution is a living document -- we have the power to amend it as specified in Article V so that it can keep pace with an evolving society. What the Supreme has done for roughly the past three generations is rob us of that prerogative, assuming the power to change the Constitution for us. This is not part of the Supreme Court's mandate, even if we concede the power of "judicial review" (which is not the power to amend the Constitution, but rather the power to uphold and enforce it against inferior conflicting laws). If you are happy to allow a star chamber of senior citizens to hold final say over your constitutional rights, be my guest, but don't complain when you find your rights mysteriously vanishing. This type of living Constitution is, in fact, a dead Constitution.
The only reason I brought up the old Supreme Court decision was because you displayed a desire to go on a historical tangent about the income tax, so I was merely trying to give you some good reading material on that subject. If you're going to live by the history, you're going to die by the history, so you might as well know it.
And no, I don't consider a particular decision correct merely because it is old. There is somewhat of a correlation because older decisions pre-date the abject lunacy of the New Deal court and the Warren court, which have littered all subsequent jurisprudence with an insurmountable garbage pile. At bottom, I esteem a decision based on whether it enforces the Constitution rather than trashes it, and by that metric, the older decisions rate much higher.
Enough fulminating. I welcome you to comment anytime you wish, just as you've welcomed me to comment on your site (which I do enjoy). I can't say I'll respond with any regularity, though, if we're just going to be talking past each other anyway.
I responded to a comment you made, the one I put in quotations. If you're claiming you're not responsible for your sentences, only for the central argument, try telepathy.
Your explanation of the Constitution doesn't clarify your point for me, so I'm going to have to ask that you try yet once again. How can you cite one Supreme Court decision as unquestionable "evidence" and dismiss another Supreme Court decision in the same breath? I apologize if you feel that you made your reasoning clear, but I sincerely don't understand your argument. From my lay perspective, either the Supreme Court is an authority or it's not. If one decision is questionable, then you can never cite a Supreme Court decision as "proof," because all decisions now have to be subjected to the same scrutiny. You feel that the one decision upholds the Constitution, whereas the other doesn't. That much I understand. What I don't understand is why you're so positive that your interpretation of the Constitution is the only valid one, that it is the Truth.
What is this "live by history," "die by history"? I don't have any problems with you citing legal history. Why wouldn't that be fair game?
Wilton, my point was that your use of the word "socialism" doesn't make sense. Socialism involves government ownership of all land and means of production. It has nothing to do with taxes and social services. That's a conservative contrivance that Republicans coined to dismiss their opposition as "anti-American." That's my central argument that you ignored.
I cited tax history to show that there is nothing new going on here, and that it's not the result of one party's partisanship, both of which you've acknowledged.
Check out this retarded discussion on my site: http://www.haloscan.com/comments/graykane/1343994776031685292/?src=hsr#47158
People like this are the result of this Republican shill about socialism, anti-American Americans, etc. This is why I'm "touchy" about the use of the word "socialism." It stirs up Cold-War fears, particularly in the older generations. I've read at least four different cases of violence between McCain and Obama supporters thus far, and I've heard personal testimonies of two here where I live, and I've experienced one instance of my personally being chased out of a neighborhood for registering voters. Things are getting nasty because of the way people misuse that word in order to drum up support for their "more authentically American" agenda.
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