Administrative Despotism

This morning I found myself killing 5 hours near the nemesis of any bibliophile: a bookstore. After dropping my high school son at a state-mandated volunteerism session, I entered the Barnes and Noble on Route 30, ruminating on the many forms of modern day involuntary servitude. I meandered to the History section where a copy of Democracy in America, by Alexis De Tocqueville, caught my eye. At $27.00, it promised to provide entertainment at a rate of $5.40 per hour; a bargain by any other name.

I write today to encourage you to co-sponsor H.R. 25, The Fair Tax Act, and to share selected sections of the latest addition to my library, as they relate to the involuntary servitude borne of Title 26.

When discussing the mitigations of the tyranny of the majority, De Tocqueville observed: “…This point deserves attention; for if a democratic republic, similar to that of the United States, were ever founded in a country where the power of one man [Karl Marx] had previously established a centralized administration and had sunk it deep into the habits and the laws of the people, I do not hesitate to assert that in such a republic a more insufferable despotism would prevail than in any of the absolute monarchies of Europe; or, indeed, than any that could be found on this side of Asia.” And so it is.

Whereas the Republic was founded before Karl Marx conspired with Frederich Engels to write the Communist Manifesto, his influence has nonetheless established a centralized administration, whose odious tentacles are sunk deeply into the habits and laws of the people. The redistributive entitlement mentality is firmly entrenched in the unproductive sector. Members of the productive sector cannot legally work for ourselves, others or employ others without registering with the IRS and paying a ransom. If we dare to make a profit, another ransom is due. If our dealings in property generate a gain, another ransom is due. If we dare to amass a fortune during life, another ransom is due when we depart this earth. And each and every exaction is enforced by threat of the confiscation of our private property---all based on different planks of the Communist Manifesto. A more despotic system I cannot imagine.

Furthermore, the docile and compliant American sheep routinely divulge the intimate details of their personal and financial lives all in the name of tax compliance. The mere suggestion that we should be compliant is revolting! De Tocqueville observed: “It is painful to perceive how much lower we are sunk than our forefathers, since we allow things to pass, under the color of justice and the sanction of law, which violence alone imposed upon them.” And so it is.

The Fourth Amendment, which says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” apparently does not apply to the IRS. Employers are compelled to divulge salaries. Bankers and brokers are compelled to divulge earnings. Mortgage companies are compelled to divulge interest payments. And our houses of worship issue receipts for tithes and offerings which we are obliged to produce when asked. I cannot imagine a more despotic system of revenue generation.

De Tocqueville wrote his influential work during the 1800’s, long before the ratification of the 16th Amendment, before the establishment of the IRS and long before the codification of the Internal Revenue Code. Although he struggled to name the impending menace, he was nonetheless a prescient man, foreseeing the oppression which would proceed from that which he later identified as “administrative despotism.” In a section titled “Despotism in Democratic Nations” he wrote:

“I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the think itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.

Above this race of men [innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike] stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure the gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages the principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will with a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits. [The misnamed “earned income tax credit” provides a fine example of this; the wretched equality of socialized medicine will likewise be viewed by many as a ‘benefit.’]

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. [The IRS extends over the whole community.] It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. [60,000 pages and still growing.] The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly constrained from acting. [The Internal Revenue Code is undeniably used as a tool for social engineering.] Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguished, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. [The weight and volume of the code and regulations stifle new businesses, thereby sentencing otherwise free-thinking ‘industrious animals’ to life on life on someone else’s rat wheel. Perfectly reasonable and rational adults are terrified of the IRS.]

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people. [And so it is.]

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain. [Through the code, our masters in Congress encourage us to save for retirement, buy homes, have children, educate ourselves and our children; as if no one, on his own advice and counsel, would undertake such activities. This is insulting and anathema to a truly free people.]

By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me that the fact of extorted obedience.

Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedience which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity. [See New Orleans]

I add that they will soon become incapable of exercising the great an only privilege which remains to them. The democratic nations that have introduced freedom into their political constitution at the very time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative constitution have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted, the people are held to be unequal to the task [Bill Clinton said: “We’re giving you a tax cut, and you better spend it right.” How insulting.]; but when the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are alternately made the playthings of their ruler, and his masters, more than kings and less than men. [Politicians manipulate by appealing to peoples worst fears. ENOUGH!] After having exhausted all the different modes of election without finding one to suit their purpose, they are still amazed and still bent on seeking further; as if the evil they notice did not originate in the constitution of the country far more than in that of the electoral body.

It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.

A constitution, republican in its head, and ultra-monarchical in all its other parts has always appeared to me to be a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.”

Let us take this opportunity to create freer institutions and responsible individuals. Free us from the involuntary servitude of the Internal Revenue Code and the Internal Revenue Service. Stop playing the part of a puppeteer. Help to end the malevolent force in the lives of a supposedly free people.

I saw Newt Gingrich at a company-sponsored event in about 1995. He was Speaker of the House at the time and he was there to make a speech and answer some questions.

Someone asked him about all the laws being passed which were encroaching on privacy. His reply was that there used to be an understanding that one of the rights of people in the US was that we had the right to be "left alone". Back then we could go live out west and be by ourselves and not be bothered by anyone. But, he said, in this day and age that's not possible anymore.

Were someone to send you fifty, nineteen paragraph, letters a day, would you read them?

Nor will your Congressman.

Yeah.... I dont' think her congressman will make it past.... " ruminating on the many forms of modern day involuntary servitude.

Just my opinion.

George, you've been here long enough to know that some articles are posted here quite beyond the choice of the poster.
Can't we just assume that the mods are doing their jobs and have no need for volunteer busibodies?

That's a great letter, and I appreciate your taking the time to write it. My guess is that the average Congresscritter was assigned Democracy in America in college and read the Cliffs Notes.

You may be qualified to be a congresscritter too, Willie.

You obviously didn't read it or you wouldn't call it bilge.

Maybe you are so used to your writings being dismissed as such that you think it is all the same.

You obviously didn't read it or you wouldn't call it bilge.

The first paragraph was rediculously superfluous,
but I didn't determine that it was bilge until the second paragraph.
That's when I stopped reading any further.
I have better things to do than waste my time on that national sales tax nonsense.

I agree that it is a longshot, but I likewise find it hard to believe that my Congressman can or will ever read the hundreds of pages of tax legislation on which he is called to vote. One of the single most important tax bills passed in the last Congress, HR 4250, The American Jobs Creation Act spanned over 200 pages...The accompanying conference report was over 800 pages. If we don't believe that he or a legislative assistant will read a 4 page letter, why should we believe for an instant that he'll read the hundreds or thousands of pages of tax legislation before voting on it?

Here's a link to the bill: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ357.108.pdf

Here's a link to the Conference Report of HR 4250: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_cong_reports&docid=f:hr755.108.pdf

"If we don't believe that he or a legislative assistant will read a 4 page letter, why should we believe for an instant that he'll read the hundreds or thousands of pages of tax legislation before voting on it?"

You shouldn't, because most of them probably do not do so, personally.

It is one thing to read a lengthly bit of proposed legislation as part of your job requirement, but quite another to read a lengthly letter from a constituant.

Thanks for this post, Goddess.

It amazes me sometimes how little thought people today generally give to the political and philosophical writings of the past. As though they were somehow not relevent to today's issues.

The most basic philosophical questions of men and societies do not change all that much. These questions have been debated for thousands of years. We ignore the conclusions of those debates at our peril.

Our Constitution plus the Bill of Rights was the result of two decades of debate by some very intelligent men who built upon the conclusions of those thousands of years of prior debate. Yet through apathy and neglect we have allowed that Constitution to be seriously compromised by public "servants" who have in fact become a new aristocracy. Private property is no longer an absolute.

Toqueville's prescience is far from unique. The Federalist Papers warn against the same perils.

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