SUPPORTING BRIEF #5: SLAVERY, Page 4
Explanations
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Chancellor Harper of South Carolina stated:
"He who has obtained the command of another's labor, first begins to accumulate and provide for the future, and the foundations of civilization are laid. We find confirmed by experience that which is so evident in theory. Since the existence of man upon the earth, with no exception whatever, either of ancient or modern times, every society which has attained civilization, has advanced to it through this process." Cotton is King and Pro-Slavery Arguments (Pritchard, Abbott, Loomis; Augusta, Ga., 1860), pg. 552. J.H. Hammond of South Carolina stated: "The slave himself must first be paid for, and thus his labor is purchased all at once, and for no trifling sum... But besides the first cost of the slave, he must be fed and clothed, if not for humanity's sake, that he may do good work, retain health and life, and rear a family to take his place. When old or sick, he is a clear expense, and so is the helpless portion of his family." Hammond's position was that the capitalist exploited the labor of human beings at a pittance, while the slaveholder had the duty "to clothe, feed, nurse, support through childhood, and pension in old age, a race of slaves." ibid., pp. 646-47. (emphasis added)
Thus we can see that the slaveholders performed a duty in return for the slave's labor. In denying the slave any of the earnings for the slave's labor,- that is, except for any allowance the master chose to give,- the slave was housed, fed, clothed, his family cared for, and so forth. The care of the slave encompassed all activities from the cradle to the grave.
What about today? What does the human being who labors today in America receive in return for the portion of his labor that is taxed away? Does the government give him food for his family? Does the government give clothing to him and his family? Does the government nurse him when he is sick? No! He receives absolutely nothing! As far as the old age pension promised, it is purely a statutory right. There are no vested rights in social security! The labor taken by force through coercion is taken for purely selfish reasons to fulfill the promise of social insurance and welfare to large masses of people who represent voters. Such a miserable thing is political slavery!
Any individual politician that willfully and knowingly imposes such a hateful and cruel despotism on a people should be tried for crimes of the highest magnitude. However, just as the slaveholders of the South were blind to their gross violations of the most sacred rights of their fellow human creatures, so today are the present political rulers. They believe that their system is good, while at the same time they are blind to the fact that our most sacred rights are being trodden into the dust.
"Because a great injury is done to another, it does not follow, that he who does it is a depraved man; for he may do it unconsciously, and, still more, may do it in the belief that he confers a good. We have learned little of moral science and of human nature, if we do not know, that guilt is to be measured, not by the outward act, but by unfaithfulness to conscience; and that the consciences of men are often darkened by education, and other inauspicious influences.... As the intellect, in grasping one truth, often loses its hold of others, and, by giving itself up to one idea, falls into exaggeration; so the moral sense, in seizing on a particular exercise of philanthropy, forgets other duties, and will even violate many important precepts, in its passionate eagerness to carry one to perfection. Innumerable illustrations may be given of the liableness of men to moral error. The practice, which strikes one man with horror, may seem to another, who was born and brought up in the midst of it, not only innocent, but meritorious." The Works of William E. Channing (American Unitarian Assoc.; Boston, 1873), Vol. II, pp. 51-52.
This is indeed true today. Those in political office have been brought up believing in social insurance and welfare. They believe that striving for it is a great good for society. But at the same time their comfortable position blinds them to the realities that exist among the laboring masses of society. The do not personally experience the fact that despoiling labor with their tax laws prevents some working people from adequately providing for their families, especially those who have just begun to work at a low wage. They do not experience the pains of families that are torn apart because of the oppressive burden imposed upon their labor. They could no more relate to these things than a totally blind man could relate to viewing the blooming of flowers in the spring.
"A man, born among slaves, accustomed to this relation from his birth, taught its necessity by venerated parents, associating it with all whom he reveres, and too familiar with its evils to see and feel their magnitude, can hardly be expected to look on slavery as it appears to more impartial and distant observers. Let it not be said, that, when new light is offered him, he is criminal in rejecting it. Are we all willing to receive a new light? Can we wonder that such a man should be slow to be convinced of the criminality of an abuse sanctioned by prescription, and which has so interwoven itself with all the habits, employments, and economy of life, that he can hardly conceive of the existence of society without this all-pervading element? May he not be true to his convictions of duty in other relations, though he grievously err in this? If, indeed, through cupidity and selfishness, he stifle the monitions of conscience, warp his judgement, and repel the light, he incurs great guilt. If we want virtue to resolve on doing right, then at the loss of every slave, he incurs great guilt. But who of us can look into his heart? To whom are the secret workings there revealed?" ibid., pp. 52-53.
Human beings are creatures of habit. Just as many of the slaveholders were brought up with the institution all around them and were educated in it, so today, the politicians as well as many of the multitude have been brought up and educated to believe in the various social programs of government. This conditioning of the minds of the multitudes has caused them to forget the importance of their most sacred property right, that being, their labor. I hope that these arguments will prove to the Court what my extensive research has revealed to me. To make ourselves slaves in our pursuit of security is one of the gravest errors a people can make; for this very thing is what caused Germany, over decades of time, to slowly decay into a totalitarian state under the National Socialists.
I do not believe that there is any politician or judge, that has a sense of love and duty, who would knowingly and willingly enslave their fellow man, and, woe, woe to him that purposely does so!
"There are many of them who would shudder as much as we at reducing a freeman to bondage, but who are appalled by what seem to them the perils and difficulties of liberating multitudes, born and brought up to that condition.... Slavery is not less a curse, because long use may have blinded most, who support it, to its evils. Its influence is still blighting, though conscientiously upheld." ibid., pg. 54.
Correspondingly today, just because the income tax has been used for six decades to tax labor, does not negate the fact that it imposes involuntary servitude by the force of law and violates the 13th Amendment, even though it is conscientiously upheld.
It is refreshing to see that there is a growing number in Congress that see a problem with the income tax and that even some of these members want to abolish the IRS entirely. There are others, no doubt, who keep supporting the income tax upon labor that are blind to the injury they are inflicting on their fellow human creatures. However, there must be others who do not want to relinquish their hold on the people's labor. The redistribution of the national income and the power that such taxation upon labor wields over the people they will not relinquish.
"They hold the slave for gain, whether justly or unjustly, they neither ask nor care. They cling to him as property, and have no faith in the principles which will diminish a man's wealth. They hold him, not for his own good, or the safety of the state, but with precisely the same views, with which they hold a laboring horse, that is, for the profit they can wring from him. They will not hear a word of his wrongs; for, wronged or not, they will not let him go." ibid., pp. 54-55.
Politicians today that hold power over the labor of the people solely for the purpose of maintaining their political support among masses of voters are more detestable than such slaveholders that Channing just described.
"He extorts, by the lash, that labor to which he has no claim, through a base selfishness. Every morsel of food, thus forced from the injured, ought to be bitterer than gall. His gold is cankered. The sweat of the slave taints the luxuries from which it streams. Better were it for the selfish wrong-doer, of whom I speak, to live as the slave, to clothe himself in the slave's raiment, to eat the slave's coarse food, to till his fields with his own hands, than to pamper himself by day, and pillow his head on down at night, at the cost of a wantonly injured fellow creature." ibid., pg. 55.
I hold malice towards no member of the Congress that unknowingly wrongs his fellow human creature. But to those who knowingly wield coercive power over the labor of the people for their own selfish interests, may every vote they get from this exercise of power be bitterer than gall. How dare they knowingly and willingly trample the most scared rights of the people into the dust for their own selfish interests! "In shutting his ear against the voice of justice, he shuts out all the harmonies of the universe, and turns the voice of God within him into rebuke." ibid., 56.
Even though the hateful despotism of slavery has been afflicted upon mankind throughout history, both in ancient and modern times, we must never forget that all life is precious to God.
"The cry of the oppressed, unheard on earth, is heard in heaven. God is just, and if justice reign, then the unjust must terribly suffer. Then no being can profit by evil-doing. Then all the laws of the universe are ordinances against guilt." ibid., pg. 56.
In the South, the slave was exploited for the purposes of worldly gain. Today, the labor of the people is exploited for political gain. I see little difference. The slave's labor was, in effect, taxed at the rate of 100% by his master. The master, in return, would care for the slave and his family; for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, for long as the slave lived. Today the master over our labor is the state, and their objective is political gain, even though they also get worldly gain as a fringe benefit from the political gain. Today, however, we are only 30% slave. But to confer the power of 30% slave confers the power of 100% slave.
Perhaps a befitting reminder to our political rulers can be found in the history of Washington shortly after his death. In his last will and testament, Washington stated:
"Upon the decease of my wife, it is my will and desire that all the slaves which I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom. To emancipate them during her life would, though earnestly wished by me, be attended with much insuperable difficulties, on account of their intermixture by marriage with the dower negroes, as to excite the most painful sensation, if not disagreeable consequences, from the latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same proprietor, it not being in my power, under the tenure by which the dower negroes are held, to manumit them." Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It (N.Y.; A.B. Burdick, 1860), pg. 194.
Helper continues on the same page with the effects Washington's will had upon his wife.
"It is said that, 'when Mrs. Washington learned, from the will of her deceased husband, that the only obstacle to the immediate perfection of this provision was her right of dower, she at once gave it up, and the slaves were made free.' A man might possibly concentrate within himself more real virtue and influence than ever Washington possessed, and yet he would not be too good for such a wife."
Let us now consider further explanations of how governmental power over labor has been made possible in our present day without seeking the consent of the people.
The following quote is taken from Hinton Helper's book Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It.
Thomas Jefferson
"There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people, produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions- the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is a imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave, he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive, either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passions towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose reign to the worst of passions; and, thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the Statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part and the amor patriae of the other; for if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another; in which he must look up the faculties of his nature, contribute, as far as depends on his individual endeavors, to the envanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed; for, in a warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion, indeed, are ever so seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis- a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest." ibid., pp. 195-96.
As we can see, Jefferson realized that human beings were creatures of habit. He who was brought up and educated in a system of slavery would see nothing wrong with the institution around him. This is true today. Growing up, we see our parents filing and paying income tax on their labor every year. When we begin working at a young age, we also, out of habit, do the same. Hence, we can see why the political forces that wrote the Social Security Act of 1935 only began taxation upon labor at 1%. To give such taxation a footing, it could not be made oppressive all at once. The first objective is to get the people into the habit of paying it year after year. Once this habit has been established among the multitude, then the taxation can be increased to whatever level the political forces desire to maintain their planned economic system. Without the ability to tax labor, a planned economic system cannot be maintained; for the bulk of the national income is represented by the money people are paid for labor. Without the ability to tax labor, the entire planned economic system would collapse.
Who would have ever thought that the first piece of social legislation, that being, the Social Security Act of 1935 sowed the seeds of slavery; and, all other social legislation that has been added since only fertilizes and waters the weeds from which slavery grows.
Jefferson further stated that "The abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these Colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant State." ibid., pg. 196. As we can see, it was the framers intent that some plan be devised by those who came after them to bring about an end to slavery. This was the main purpose behind the Democratic Party that Jefferson formed from the slaveholders themselves. However, as we can see, it didn't take the slaveholders very long to turn their backs on Jefferson and the rest of the framers in an attempt to make slavery universal and perpetual. One can only imagine what America would be like today if not for the efforts of the people, aided by Lincoln, to thwart the conspiracy.
Sadly, once again we see that the Democratic, as well as the Republican party, have left their roots. The Democrats no longer reflect Jefferson and the Republicans no longer reflect Lincoln; and, if there are any in their ranks that do, I would submit that the number would only be a small handful.
George Horace Lorimer, editor of The Saturday Evening Post, saw this change take place with the Democratic Party during the implementation of the New Deal. In his May 23, 1936 editorial entitled "Patriot and Partisan" he stated: "Jefferson is dead and his party is dead, its members fighting for a mess of New Deal pottage instead of for his ideals, its written platform and its unwritten one, on which it is functioning, a hodgepodge of Socialistic ideas."
Promising security through social insurance and welfare was an appealing concept among masses of people. It created a strong political base by which the Democratic Party could get votes. In addition, the Republicans, realizing this, also jumped ship and the principles laid down by Lincoln. After all, no political party can stay in power without the support of the voters.
Some very interesting points were brought out in a Saturday Evening Post article entitled "The New Deal and the Housekeeper" by Samuel Crowther found in the March 21, 1936 issue. Let us today reconsider some of these points. He stated on page 30:
"Do you know that the unseen dollar a week you pay out of every four dollars of income will, at the present rate, soon be $1.50?" (emphasis added)
Note that Mr. Crowther used the word "unseen" in reference to the way government collected taxes. This verifies the proposition that the income tax laws were not used to directly tax money paid for labor at this period of our history. To further establish this fact, Mr. Crowther stated:
"Do you know that those who directly pay taxes contribute only a relatively small part of the cost of government and that the big contributions is by those who think they pay no taxes?"
American workers, at this point in our history, paid taxes indirectly.
"Do you know that in nearly every purchase you make you pay (1) a corporate income tax, (2) an excise-profits tax, (3) a capital-stock tax, (4) a gasoline tax, (5) a manufacturers' excise tax, (6) a personal-income tax, (7) a commodity license tax, (8) a occupational license tax, (9) an electricity tax, (10) a communications tax and (11) an insurance tax?" (emphasis added)
What greater proof is there to establish the fact that American workers at this point in our history paid no personal income tax to the federal government.
"Do you know that a tax levy is only an assertion made by the Government that it knows better how to spend your dollar than you do? Do you know that through taxes the Government can deny you the right to enjoy your earnings and your home? Do you know that taxes are running between 20 and 25 per cent of the national income? Do you know that, if taxes amount to 35 per cent or more of the national income, State Socialism will have arrived, in fact if not in name, and you will be the powerless pawn of the politicians? Do you know that Socialism and Communism are founded on a denial of the American precept that a dollar primarily belongs to the one who earns it?" (emphasis added: also, government today controls about 50% of the national income.)
Any politician today in office, or one desirous of office, that stood before the people and announced that he or she was a socialist would commit political suicide. Ironically, the people, in the 1932 election, sent a clear statement that did not want any form of socialism. George Horace Lorimer, editor of The Saturday Evening Post brought this out in his January 21, 1933 editorial entitled "The Socialist Vote". He stated that the socialist vote "was less that nine hundred thousand, the smallest percentage of the total vote cast in thirty-two years."
This is interesting. What happened to the Socialists? Rarely, if ever, do you hear about them. Were did they go? Did they just vanish into thin air? Perhaps a quote from Friedrich A. Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1944) can answer this question. Remember, Hayek, who was in close contact with German intellectual life, saw firsthand the decay of German democracy into a totalitarian state. Hayek pointed out that Germany had their old parties of freedom. What happened to them? He stated: "Unquestionably, the promise of more freedom was responsible for luring more and more liberals along the socialist road, for blinding them to the conflict which exists between the basic principles of socialism and liberalism, and for often enabling socialists to usurp the very name of the old party of freedom." ibid., pg. 27.
You see, they did not go away. Realizing that they couldn't obtain voter support under the name "Socialists", they absorbed themselves into the old parties of freedom, and entrenched themselves in non-elective positions in the Executive.
Another man who witnessed the implementation of the New Deal was a man named Sterling E. Edmunds of the St. Louis bar. His book entitled The Roosevelt Coup D'Etat (1940, Reprinted by Gospel Ministries Publications; Boise, Id., 1995) states the following on pages 6-7.
"Roosevelt, head of the Democratic party, was elected to the Presidency of the United States in 1932 by a popular vote of 22, 821,857 to Mr. Hoover's 15,761,841, and his party's candidates won 322 of the 435 seats in the lower House, with 68 of the 96 seats in the Senate. He appointed no man of recognized ability or attachment to our free institutions to his Cabinet posts. Among those he did appoint were four not of his party, who were associated with the elder La Follette, in his Progressive and Socialist campaign for the Presidency in 1924. He also surrounded himself with a group of young radicals as a sort of inner Cabinet, as his special personal advisers. It was they who secretly concerted and drafted the plan for the overthrow of constitutional government, which he put into execution."
Recall the mass of executive legislation that was rubber-stamped by Congress during the "emergency" session in the spring of 1933. It was written by a collection of socialists in the executive with the approval of Roosevelt. The executive legislation massively expanded executive powers far beyond those described in the Constitution. The socialists, now firmly entrenched in a massive executive bureaucracy, no longer needed voter support; for the only elected executive officer is the President. Of all the modes of obtaining power, usurpation is the blackest.
One more quote from Mr. Edmund's book is worthy of our attention, for it comes straight from the father of the Democratic party himself. Quoting Jefferson from a note written in his annals of 1792, Mr. Edmunds stated:
"I said to President Washington that if the equilibrium of the three great bodies, the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, could be preserved, if the Legislature could be kept independent, I should never fear the result of such a government; but that I could not but be uneasy when I saw the Executive had swallowed up the Legislative branch." ibid., pg. 3.
America's destiny lies in the hands of its people. The country is slowly being reduced into a Servile State under socialists who have primarily entrenched themselves in the massive executive bureaucracy and function upon the people with no congressional oversight or subject to the elective control of the people.
In an often-quoted speech before the New York Bar Association in 1893, Justice David Brewer declared of the judiciary:
"They make no laws, they establish no policy, they never enter into the domain of popular action. They do not govern. Their functions in relation to the State are limited to seeing that popular action does not trespass upon right and justice as it exists in written constitutions and natural law. So it is that the utmost power of the courts and judges works no interference with true liberty, no trespass on the fullest and highest development of government of and by the people; it only means security to personal rights- the inalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; it simply nails the Declaration of Independence, like Luther's theses against indulgences, upon the doors of the Wittenburg church of human rights, and dares the anarchist, the socialist and every other assassin of liberty to blot out a single word." New York Bar Association Proceedings, 1893, pg. 46. Cited in Ralph Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic Thought (N.Y.: The Ronald Press Co., 1940), pg. 233.
Shall we remain apathetic and indifferent to our most sacred property right and let the state swallow us down whole? Are we going to allow them to rob posterity of any hope of freedom and liberty? The choice between Liberty and Slavery are before you. Which will you choose?