Conscientous Objecting!

Why not for this, too?

And #3

Often, a unique perspective is what it takes to “set brushfires in the minds of men,” as Sam Adams famously said. TL Davis, a fellow Substacker, provides this regularly. Here’s one of his latest that might get you thinking “Why not?”

BW

If one can be a conscientious objector to military service and be given a role that, without relieving one of the duties of service, does not require one to pull a trigger and kill another human being, so should taxpayers be able to pay taxes without being forced to fund illegal activity. I know this subject has come up before and was summarily executed by the courts, we are in an entirely different world today.

On the one hand the government is so thoroughly corrupt and in the hands of lunatics that its implosion from lack of fiduciary responsibility, morality or common sense is likely to encourage its own demise in weeks or months and provide for a citizen’s reset during which all manner of corrections might be made to the system.

On the other hand, it has been so for quite a while now and seems to have some levitating capability over the abyss that just might last another decade during which the people will lose all ability to correct the system without either civil war or counter-revolution.

In the first case, I can wait it out, see what’s left and strive to aid in its repair, assuming I’m still alive. In the second case, I want a way to not participate in the horrendous activities this government seems bent on pursuing. If for no other reason than the condition of my soul. I do not want to face my creator with the current record of funding child sex trafficking, aiding and abetting the genocide of an innocent and unsuspecting population and the wholesale impoverishment of the people into a destitute and starving mass.

No government wants to be held accountable, that goes without saying. In some ways, that’s necessary to achieve the secrecy with which some weapons must be developed without giving those intent on war the ability to know and make them obsolete before they’re ever produced. I’m a firm believer in peace through strength, because the alternative is war through weakness.

Since the development of nuclear weapons there has not been a peer-to-peer war in nearly eighty years, while history is rife with them before that, extending back to Macedonia. The idea that some of our wealth should not be directed toward protecting the nation and the people from invasion and subjection to foreign powers is misguided in my opinion. Wars and military strength are central to peace, because no matter how peaceful a people might be, there are always those more aggressive and hostile on the horizon. That simple acknowledgement, however, should not be construed to give license to the sort of corrupt and cynical sort of military we have today, pursuing the goals and aims of unelected profiteers and social engineers, with a congress so weak and subservient that no good can come from it.

At any point where the government can lay claim to one’s earnings, it becomes slavery. Despite the Thirteenth Amendment protections against slavery or involuntary servitude, written obviously before the Sixteenth Amendment that lays claim to “incomes,” they would seem to be in conflict. The difference, in my mind, and how they got around the idea of taxation without endorsing national slavery, lies in that word: “incomes.”

While I’m sure that there are brighter minds that mine, who toil daily in the prospect of legally avoiding income tax and spend their careers facilitating the collection and assessment of taxes, I find the practice of taxing labor as slavery. The difference, and why I believe there must be a means of conscientious objection to the illegal activities of our government, is that an “income” is not what we have been told that it is. An income is some profit derived from investment or speculation, what we now call “capital gains” in most terminology. The transaction of labor should not be taxed for this simple reason: that is a trade, not an income.

When I go to work for a company, I have the time to do so, I have acquired knowledge that allows me to do the job. These are things that are inherent to my person, my body, my mind, my strength or resourcefulness that could be applied to my own condition and typically were: gathering wood, hunting, skinning, canning food, building a root cellar, etc. When I engage in employment, I trade all of those abilities and more to an employer for an equivalent amount of cash that will purchase the things I no longer have to wrest from nature myself. There is no financial transaction, there was a trade of equal value.

For this reason alone, it becomes a moral issue. When I invest in a company or venture, I have taken a risk with money, not unlike gambling, though a good investor puts the odds of success in their favor through investigation and evaluation, but it is still a risk and often I am rewarded with profits, but I have done nothing physically, with my body. What little time I’ve used my brain in investigation and evaluation do not compare to the daily chore for a wage. I might even develop a method of investing where I no longer have to search for good opportunities, but rather I wait for some venture to align with my predetermined set of criteria and invest in that. The point being that the whole time I am invested in some venture, I am physically able to do all other things, I have the time and the knowledge to achieve something else. I might even work for a company to cover my base costs of living that I would otherwise have to wrest from nature and use my spare time to invest.

When my time and labor is used to supply me and my family with the things necessary for survival, that is not income, it is a trade and if taxed, becomes slavery. Since all taxes on wages are slavery, it needs to end. Since that is not likely, since so many others rely on enslaving me for their own needs, I think it not only necessary, but illegal to do anything other than allow me conscientious objection to the illegal activity the government is engaged in, i.e., child sex trafficking, genocide, drug trafficking, etc.

TL Davis

More to come! Don’t miss any! Do this….