I believe that it is at some risk of antagonizing the resounding silence over this that I enter the following link to a post at my own weblog, in trail of this discussion. My post there comes as consequence of an e-mailer's contemplation of these matters.

http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php?id=P3098

But I don't mind working with no net below.

Onward.

"That's the real enemy, the apathy."

~~~~~~~~~~~

"I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.

It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question my influence -- humble as it is -- is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years -- not perniciously, but beneficially -- not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that I was right."

(William Lloyd Garrison - editorial in "The Liberator" - January 1, 1831, emphases original)

"Another way of looking at it is--it is not so bad yet that anyone who has accomplished alot will want to risk it all. "

"It's not so bad" was uttered by someone in WE THE LIVING. There are simply those that it will never be bad enough to make a stand. That's the real enemy, the apathy.

************************************************

Spaceplayer Sight and Sound

"So combatting the ideas is essential, and I'm not sure what actions should be taken, and whether those actions are rational for the individual right now."

Did you ever read Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail"?

Right off the bat, and while everybody's hair is standing straight up at the very mention of his name around here: I've studied his life and thoughts pretty intently, and I know that he was a commie before just about anyone on the planet knew that he existed. Everyone reading this should understand that what I'm about to point out is nowhere near an unqualified endorsement of anything he said or did.

For instance: the "lunch counter sit-ins" were a plain violation of private property. My point here is that there are crucial distinctions to be drawn in all this, and that there is a categorical difference between the state enforcing racism at law and the despicable but nonetheless politically legitimate discriminations of private persons. (e.g.: I say that Lester Maddox -- asshole that he was -- had every right in the world to stand in the front door of his restaurant and deny entrance to black people.) Freedom doesn't mean that everyone -- or even anyone -- has to like you: they just have to leave you alone.

King wrote the "Letter" in response to clergy who, to put the thing in plain terms, condemned his lack of decorum in taking matters to direct civil disobedience instead of challenging government enforced racism in the courts. They hadn't the wit to sort this out to its essence, which was to raise the matter of legal racism to a direct perceptual concrete where people not extremely adept at thinking could grasp the wrong of it right in front of their own eyes. (This is, these rotten days, referred to as "putting a human face" on it, by people who know how to repeat what they hear without actually analyzing it.)

He took the logic of state oppression directly to its conclusion and demonstrated what it really meant in the lives of real human beings, by flooding the courts and prisons. That was the point at which people who had never seriously thought about it began to stop and say, "Wait a minute. This is really wrong." He made the intellectual case to the country at large by beginning with defiant action as a matter of demonstrating the prevailing evil in its fullest implications.

He went through it in his mind, reached his conclusion, staked his ass on that conclusion, and convinced large numbers of others to do the same thing.

Now. Whether something like this is "rational" when it comes to starving this government out of existence -- or simply into submission (I'll stipulate) -- completely depends on the values-structure of any given individual's own life. I completely understand that it's an enormous leap for, say, a man with a wife and kids and a mortgage to start thinking about it, much less do it. All those things positively get in the way: what we live with today holds the things that we love as hostages against action like this. That is exactly why I made the conscious and deliberate decision, a long time ago, that I was never going to get involved with them. I never had any illusions that anyone was going to follow my example -- hell; almost nobody knew what I was doing and I didn't care.

However, I maintain that things are fairly swiftly approaching the pass where it would be far more profitable to everyone's well-being to at least begin considering civil disobedience, before far more grim alternatives are pressed on people involuntarily.

It's been thirty-six years since Ayn wrote: "This country, as yet, cannot be ruled - but it can explode. It can blow up into the helpless rage and blind violence of a civil war."

As I watch the general political dynamics in America winding-up, I consider that warning more direly necessary than ever before, and only more so nearly every day. There might be no way to head it off. I might be dead wrong in my estimation of a moral conscience to which to appeal with direct action. But I am flatly and unalterably convinced that politics as has been practiced all my life, and for many generations before me, simply cannot do the trick. And before anyone reaches for their guns, I say it's worth the effort, even considering the cost, which I know very well for all the things that I've always lived without.

As things are going, they will eventually cost people all those things, anyway, and probably a lot more.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

"I like you attitude and ideas, though, Billy."

Thank you, sir, for saying so.

...I think that sums up why folks don't want to just withdraw.

With apologies to the majority of people on SoloPassion, I do not know that I necesarily want some of these people controlling or setting policy on anything, anyway. 

Another way of looking at it is--it is not so bad yet that anyone who has accomplished alot will want to risk it all.  It certainly appears that that might change in my generation, since no one (kids) is being taught WHY America is as good as it is, and multiculturalism is taken as an incontrovertable fact. 

The biggest danger is that the population in greater percentage is becoming dependant on the govt, and the same population is being systematically ideologicall disarmed.  Couple that with a culture-wide anti-intellectualism.  This means that the average person in the next gen is going to be a heck of alot more likely to accept a sort of communalism/Socialism. 

So combatting the ideas is essential, and I'm not sure what actions should be taken, and whether those actions are rational for the individual right now.

I like you attitude and ideas, though, Billy.

Scott DeSalvo

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!

"I wish I had more hope for people like people on SOLOPassion to turn the tide..."

I do, too, Scott, but this is where I have long been convinced that Objectivism, certainly as it approaches practical political affairs, is utterly fucking delusional. Every now and then, I recall Betsy Speicher's Usenet tagline about "winning" and just about have hernias laughing at that flagrant horseshit.

And, should anyone think about it, they'll find that the approach that I have in mind is actually a mind/body synthesis which ought to be right down Objectivist lines, but it's amazing to me to watch 'em roll tits-up at the remotest suggestion of authentic action. (Here's a good illustration: for all he's really worth to Objectivism today, That Woman might as well never have devoted a single line to Ragnar Danneskjold.)

I'm not interested in any of the flap over Chris Sciabarra. I take my own values from things he's written, and everybody gets to drop dead, for all I care. In any case, though, he spiked the issue far more concisely than otherwise sticks in my memory when he wrote: "The most subversive political implication of 'Atlas Shrugged', is that individual freedom is possible only to those who are strong enough, psychologically and morally, to withdraw their sanction from any system that coercively thrives off their productive energies."

("The Russian Radical", pp. 301-302)

People keep feeding this monster, and I don't know what they expect is going to happen.

For such intelligent people, why they act like such dummies year after year and lifetime after lifetime is quite beyond me.

...at the risk of appearing to be half a moron, let me say...

You're right, by and large.  These folks are standing on legality rather than morality, and that is mistake #1.  Most people have no idea that 80 years ago, there was none of this direct Federal taxation--into their pocket before it ever touches yours.

The big issue now is--everyone with power is at the trough.  There is enough to keep the young and stupid stupid.  By the time folks wake up to this, they look at the nut jobs about to be gunned down by the government and say "Jesus, this taxation is out of control, but does that mean I'm like THOSE fucking wackos?

We will never get the politicos and social elite away from the trough, but neither will we get the lower end of the population away, either.  Every year, the welfare state grows larger, and more and more people owe their jobs to a pork-barrel project, political connection, or accept one or more forms of welfare.  When providing for yourself and your own is no longer is contingent on growing the Nanny State ever larger, you do not rock the boat.  To ensure no rocking occurs, the number of people on the dole one way or another increases. 

To overturn the apple cart, we'd need a revolution from above (which will never happen because everyone in national politics--EVERYONE-- is irredeemably corrupt and is stealing so much that they can never walk away from the opportunity) and from below (but that's unlikely because of social programs, entitlements, welfare, and -shudder- national health care--and even if it did happen, these folk would want an even more lucrative system for do-nothings). 

There is no hope left for this country, and the only issue at this point is whether it will do a slow fade or a fast collapse.  I wish I had more hope for people like people on SOLOPassion to turn the tide, but we are a ripple in a huge, stagnant pond--and the other residents of the swamp live off of the pond scum.  The only real hope is the founding of a new nation.

Scott DeSalvo

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!

"You say that the Government legally entitling itself to a third of your income isn't enough.

What if it were a third of your physical property?"

Why the distinction? {sigh} This whole subject just bores me to pieces. I bloody hate just about everybody I see going anywhere near it because they're all about half-morons, at least.

Take these twits who're the subject at hand here. They don't have a moral leg to stand on and they're not interested. What concerns them is the law. (Thoreau might as well never have drawn his distinction between "the law" and what's right, so far as it's come down to dopes like this.) For years, I've tried to make the point to people like this that they're just acting like a focus-group for legislators: if the latter should take the clue and write tax law as these morons are suggesting, then what?

Fuck 'em all. That's what I say.

I get to say that because I haven't filed a tax return in thirty years, now. I've wrecked my career behind it (it's extremely difficult to find work for people who'll actually pay me what I contract for), and I've been prepared to go to prison all my adult life. And I say that we could tip this whole thing over in a fairly short time if only enough people stood up to this thief culture and said, "No. You cannot have what I produce." We could starve it out of existence: I believe that there is still enough of a moral conscience remaining in this country to which to appeal on the original principles of freedom that once made this place the light of the world.

But I also think that that opportunity is slipping by. It won't be long -- in historical terms -- before the remnants of that consciousness are completely gone. It's obvious to me that voting is never going to work, and I'm not interested to argue over that: if the principles behind such a conviction aren't obvious to the mean level of intelligence around here, then I don't care to set them out.

Most people see what I'm talking about as drastic. {shrug} Well, I think civil war is a lot more drastic, and that's where all this is headed, sooner or later.

This "MakeTheStand" deal is just another day at The Endarkenment.

Duncan,

If I really started getting fed up with the US government on these issues, I'd start making plans to move. I could work in Taiwan where the income tax is 6%, own bank accounts in the Caymans etc. Right now, I consider the taxes a burdensome annoyance, but part of what I accept for living and working in a near-ideal environment for me.

Jim

This issue has actually raised a number of interesting questions for me, summed up in this post from Pax Baculum:

To be clear - I don't consider the income tax an issue worth killing or dying over. But, at what point does it become worth it? What one violation of our rights marks the point at which armed resistance is appropriate & moral?

What if it were a third of your physical property? What if it were a third of your family (don't scoff, for that's exactly what conscription is). At what point does the mere fact that something is legal not matter any more? Are you arguing that legality excuses any action on the part of the Government?

I'd be interested in feedback from SOLOists on this one ... I still havent' decided my position on the matter, but my kneejerk reaction was one of support.

---
Buy and wear InfidelGear - 100% of all InfidelGear profit goes to SOLO!

Actually they do - they have explicitly stated that they're prepared to die over this matter, and expect to should a raid take place.

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Buy and wear InfidelGear - 100% of all InfidelGear profit goes to SOLO!

They also do not get that they are outgunned and are likely to get law enforcement officers who shouldn't be their enemy killed in the process of doing this.

Jim

The Code does not include a statement that the tax is mandatory.

Case law interpreting the Code interprets the Federal income tax as mandatory.

Simple.  But these people do not get it.  They do not understand that Court's interpretation of a statute is just as much "the law" as a statute.

If this movement ever becomes an issue, Congress will amend the Code, and voila! Its in the "law."

I have little doubt that local, State and National government uses gestapo tactics.

Scott DeSalvo

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!