Any libertarians here?

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And that's a point I try to get people to understand.

Just because the government can impose its will by force does not mean it operates with the "rule of law." The state routinely does things that violate the very "rule of law" it says it abides by. However, since their own courts are corrupt, they act like thugs, not just and noble rulers.

If a man takes your money by the threat of violence, he is a thief. If a man takes your money because the law truly says you must give him your money, that is different.

Taxation in some applications is the product of the rule of law, which can be clearly documented and proven. Taxation which cannot be documented and proven (as in the case of the income tax) is theft by threat of violence.

The key of the exercise is to FREE YOUR MIND from the prison. If you believe you owe the income tax because a state agent with a clear bias to tell you it is the law says so, you are thinking like a slave, a prisoner. If you know you don't owe anything unless that agent can show you the printed law that says you must pay, and that agent takes your money by threat of force, you recognize that the state is a thief and acting as a criminal.

Your mind is free. You question authority. You don't believe you have a legal duty just because someone with a costume and fancy title says so....you want to see the proof rather than let yourself be deceived by someone with something to gain if they lie to you.

Obviously, I have read many of your disrespectful posts in the past.

Thanks for the response, was hoping Orwell would respond for himself but this is the new America. I really don't think Orwell would make the same comparisons based on a discussion about religion for example. I could say, comparing every christian to the nuts in Kansas for example. They both read the bible, go to church...must be similar. Yes, the new America. But, I see the danger in this kind of weak half-assed association so I do not dabble in it..

Pet Peeve Alert, really grinds my gears when someone starts a post with the word "Actually". Because it is an attempt to correct or disregard someone's previous statements continuing the cycle of disagreement. Much better methods to accomplish the same task.

Drug laws are notorious for not being legislated at the MUNICIPAL or COUNTY levels. When a quorum must be met by municipal or county laws to pass a local bill and people don't show up and the only 2 ELECTED officials that did show up passed the law anyway, then it creates a sense of LAWLESSNESS which defeats the intended purpose. This is just not a problem with local legislative procedures but can also be seen at the federal level.

The original post was about letting any Libertarians have a chance to voice their association. Not, another socialist anti-everything rant repository. But this is WP, so what do you expect.

The income tax origins have some dubious and ominous overtones. I thought this was going to be a good discussion but turned into "this person is a loon because they don't think they have to pay their income taxes because they think it is not a real law" innuendos.

We've been paying income tax for how long now? And, the socialists have not been happy during the same entire time period. Has anyone met a happy content socialists?

Granted.



I guess I would say policy. And to pre-qualify myself, not all policy, but the fundamental policies.



I admit that it would be easy for me to fall into this trap. I will do my best not to. I don't view it as picking and choosing, I'm not conceding every decision they ever made. What I am doing is acknowledging what I see as the fundamentals of a free society, laid down only by this congress, and subsequently destroyed.



There is truth to this statement, I am not denying that fact. However, how the need for new tax revenues would dictate the need for a central bank is puzzling.



Dude, that's just not true. You're young, so I forgive you that. When I was your age (I hated people saying "when I was your age", full circle and all that), I would have described myself as an anarchist. I had a huge mohawk, wore an upside down American flag, volunteered at an alternative media center, worked with Food Not Bombs, all that good stuff. However, as I grew older, I experienced the particularly nasty side of the far-left. There is an element of group-think that is just as pervasive (if not more so) as the group-think of the far right. I was, and still am concerned with the well-being of all human beings, but I am also now concerned with the well-being of the individual. The freedom of the individual to do as they please (without interfering with the freedoms of others) is fundamental if your goal is the betterment of society, if only because of our inherent nature.

I am not some selfish right-wing nutjob, as your statement suggests.

I also don't align myself with those who really buy into Alex Jones' fear-mongering.

I didn't respond to your post because it was just a random rant that didn't really seem relevant to my previous post or address any of its points. I simply noted a correlation between belief in one crazy thing and belief in other crazy things. Now, this obviously does not refute claims against the income tax, but it does seem to indicate that it is often not worth the bother to address those arguments in detail because they are, more often than not, held by paranoid nut jobs who fall into the "true believer" category and will not change their beliefs no matter what the evidence says.

Oh, and it's cool to spell "America" with a K. That really helps demonstrate your point that we're a totalitarian dictatorial society.


I'm far closer to Libertarian than to Socialist. But I'm also sane and rational, so I'm not going to deny historical fact. The income tax is legal. Whether you think the income tax is a good or bad idea is a separate discussion, and by all means if you believe it is a bad idea work to change the law in order to abolish it. It's the same thing I tell gun control advocates- from a legal standpoint, we clearly have a Constitutionally protected individual right to bear arms. That's not really disputable, at least not if you're going to be intellectually honest. So if you want strict gun control, you have to change the existing laws rather than make false claims about what our laws say.


Well, isn't your claim that you don't have to pay income tax because you don't think it's a real law? I don't see how you've been straw-manned at all, you just hold crazy views and that was recognized by other posters.


A bit under a century. Nope, the socialists haven't been happy because we aren't living under socialism. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

I think I recall reading that his argument largely rested on a claim that the amendment was not valid unless each state that ratified it ratified a verbatim identical version, and some of them had petty things like spelling differences, a (non-crucial) missing or changed word, and similar bits of technicalities. Here's a link.


I remember hearing that people with titles of nobility were barred from public office. I don't understand how you believe this blocks lawyers and bankers. Bankers and lawyers do not typically hold titles of nobility. There are several lawyers in my family, and I don't believe any of them have been granted titles of nobility.

There was a perceived need for a central bank with or without the income tax, and the central bank was a major disagreement early on in American history. The Federal Reserve Act occurred at roughly the same time as the ratification of the 16th Amendment, but this doesn't necessarily mean that one required the other. There have been times in our history when we had a central bank but no income tax, and other times when we had an income tax but no central bank. A bit less than a hundred years ago we decided we wanted both, and we don't seem to have changed our minds yet.

In most every state, a lawyer and a banker often carries the title of Esquire. Some would say it is just ceremonial, but it really is not. Bankers and lawyers have (in many ways as a whole) operated to bring America back under the subjugation of the British Crown. Hence why the original 13th Amendment prohibited anyone who accepted a title of nobility from holding public office....a conflict of interest.

Except US states do not grant titles of nobility, and besides that Esquire is not even part of the nobility in the old British sense. And it doesn't apply to bankers at all. As far as your paranoid delusions about lawyers and bankers bringing America "back under the subjugation of the British Crown"... My ancestors fought in the Revolution, and I can assure you that my lawyer relatives are all loyal American citizens. Besides that, most of the Founders were lawyers, so it seems highly unlikely that they would attempt to prohibit themselves from holding office.

You really are just undermining your own credibility with these kinds of posts.

That article was interesting, but I take anything published by on a site like that (George Washington University) to basically have a real high probability of bias in favor of the "status quo."

The writer makes this observation, which I find both interesting and troubling....



So, what he's saying is that the government can commit fraud and get away with it because the court will not perform its function. This is what makes government criminal. The design of the American system is that every aspect of its function can be checked and balanced by functions of the other branches. If the court will not do its job when fraud takes place, then the system of government is broken.

Recently (2005) the Real ID Act was passed illegally. How? The law prohibits a bill from being attached to an emergency appropriations bill. This is because emergency appropriations bills sail past most of the procedures that slow down legislation and gives time for public comment. Still, that didn't stop it being illegally attached to a spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it hasn't stopped the government from trying to implement what it contains.

Perhaps the bigger crime is that even though a legal action could be tried, like anything else, that takes lots of money, and the average person cannot challenge the state purely because of limited financial ability. So, the government gets away with criminal behavior.

And your sources aren't biased?


I don't even know if it's worth the bother to respond to this.

Look, the job of the judiciary is to interpret the law. The legislature passes laws. If the courts claim "you didn't actually pass that law," they are stepping on the legislature's turf and overstepping their own bounds. This is the principle of separation of powers. How is the legislature committing fraud? If the legislature says they passed a bill, they did.

I think I can admit that perhaps your grasp of American history is stronger than mine. I'll have to get to some research before I can attempt to refute this.

My impression at the moment is that there wasn't actually much desire for such things, but that outside sources pushed them through. As I do, I admit that I could be wrong and will look for unbiased sources to confirm or deny said impression.

Orwell is strong imo. I will *FLEX* for you.

What was there to refute? The issue of the central bank was probably the biggest unresolved issue early on, remember the feud between Hamilton and Jefferson?

Anyways, US history isn't my specialty, so I could be wrong in places. Most of what I know of US history is just general knowledge, or derived from aimless Wikipedia browsing. But I think I'm mostly accurate on the general statements.


Hm. Well, there tends to be some populist opposition to the idea of a central bank, as expressed most strongly by the Jackson Presidency. I'm not really up on the history of central banking in the US, so I don't know if there was a general desire for a central bank when we established it, but I know most economists regard a central bank as largely necessary, and our economy seemed to suffer during the times when we did not have a central bank. I do know that there was significant popular support for the introduction of an income tax- it was definitely part of the Democratic platform, and the hugely popular William Jennings Bryan was a major proponent. The idea was that a graduated income tax was more fair than other methods of taxation, and most of the poor and middle class are fine with raising taxes on the rich.

Unbiased sources don't exist. You instead have to look at several different sources, analyze their biases, and take those biases into consideration when forming your own opinion.

I never made this claim. Please re-read my posts at your convenience.

And, yes it is cute to spell America with a K. Kalifornia was a precursor. And, no I am not responsible for that movie title.

I really don't know what this "true believer" stuff is. Please explain so that I know what I am being labeled as next.

My only mistake in this post was to mention someone's name that I confused with someone else. And, prefixing my mentioning of this name with "I may be wrong on this name..." is not good enough.

The point that I was making is that it is not good to compare one controversial issue with another simply to prove that the first issue is more absurd. Because, when you do that, there is a greater risk of stepping on someone's toes. For example, how many times on this site has someone been compared to a Nazi simply for thinking one way. If I was to say that the militant wing of feminism is just like the Nazi party or the 9/11 conspiracy people, does this help or hurt?

I have relatives in NJ, knew someone that did not make it out on that day. And, now I am being compared to a 9/11 conspiracy person. Good Day.

In describing myself, libertarian is one of the first five qualities that comes to mind. However the political party is not one I can support.

I suppose "Libertarian" is the closest label I can attatch to myself without having to use a 3-letter prefix and/or a hyphen.