Representation Without Taxation

Let us first explain the title to today’s essay for those who have been educated in America in the last thirty years.  In colonial days, the British controlled the comings and goings of the American colonies under the court of George III – a monarch not known for his liberalism much less good common sense.  George and his minions (think today’s democrats – Barry, Harry, Nancy, Ben et.al.) had a penchant for wasteful spending; too many foreign involvements; lots of government employees and gun toting bureaucrats and a penchant for taking care of their own – back then the gang were lords and dukes and duchesses.  As a result of these costly activities, George and his gang were deep in debt (sound familiar?)  So they levied taxes wherever they could get away with it and they mistakenly thought that they could get away with it in the American colonies.  Instead there was a movement that was simply fed up with their wasteful ways and, upon being subjected to the new tax levies, a revolution commenced.  One of its rallying slogans was – no taxation without representation.  Which simply meant we are ready to govern ourselves and not be subjected to paying for your nonsense given that we don’t even have a voice in determining your nonsense.

In case you were not taught about the outcome of this series of events – your country was created by this fed-up group of people who were opposed to wasteful spending.  These folk would rather choose a freedom concept in which they and their neighbors took responsibility for their future.  They set up a new country based on very limited government because they had too long suffered under the control of irresponsible, self dealing bureaucrats and tyrants.

This is American history.  It is a story for the ages.  America’s movement to throw off government involvement in their everyday lives and take responsibility for their everyday affairs and future began a freedom of the individual movement that, to this day, is still unfolding in despotically controlled peoples in the world.  To this day, there are human beings who are giving their lives, their fortunes, their very future to breathe the air of freedom and responsibility.   240 years after the American colonists took up arms to get rid of heavy handed government, other people in the world are still following their example. 

Giving it away in the hope that government might make something better for someone is a betrayal of profound significance.  There is no government bureaucracy in the history of the world that has ever made a people’s life better.  People come together when necessary to improve their condition or prevent someone else from dominating them.  And then they go back to earning their living; educating their children and helping their neighbors.  This is our history, up until 40 or 50 years ago. 

In America today, money is taken from taxpayers – a dwindling minority and spent on programs and wars and so many unnecessary activities that are the consequence of elected politicians and their uncountable numbers of hired bureaucrats who are put and maintained in their places of authority by a majority of Americans who are no longer taxpayers.  A majority of Americans now are the recipients or the beneficiaries of the government spending to the extent that they are able to levy taxes on the minority through a distortion of the one man – one vote republican/democratic principle. The colonists fought to get rid of government and exercise their own vote which, at the time, included the responsibility to pay taxes.  Today, you get to vote and not pay taxes.  This is the great distortion of our time.

In the last 50 years, congress has taken the democratic concepts of no taxation without representation and one man – one vote and mutated it into a tyranny of those who get without giving.  The price we pay for this distorted form of tyranny is the abandonment of democracy and the replacement with a government of bureaucracy.  Instead of the bureaucrats of the king and his court we now have the bureaucracy of the voters – the majority which does not pay for that which they maintain with their ballot.  Think about that – this bureaucracy that no one wants to deal with is maintained because it is the only way for the majority to keep control over the minority that pays for it. 

Go figure how to rebel against this situation.  240 years ago it was not even conceivable.