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The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
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* The Future of Freedom Foundation * Mar/94 *


A Warning from the Past
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by Charles Adams

In A.D. 476 Odovacar, a German commander in the Roman army, sacked
Rome and took over the imperial throne. That date is usually cited
as the end of the Roman Empire. As a political force, Rome did end
about that time, but the spirit of Roman civilization had long
since died, having been put to death by Diocletian, an emperor who
is supposed to have saved Rome by remaking the tax system around
A.D. 297.

The idea of liberty and freedom first appeared in the ancient world
among the Greeks. It was later taken over by the Romans, who
erected temples in honor of the Goddess of Liberty. She appeared on
Roman coins during the time of Rome's greatness, and we also put
the goddess on our silver and gold coins not too long ago. The
French made a gift to America over a hundred years ago of the giant
colossus that stands in New York harbor, our Statue of Liberty.
While it may have been a gift from the French, it was really a gift
from the Romans. The Goddess of  Liberty in the form of a woman was
a Roman concept we and the French have copied as a symbol of our
national spirit.

The Roman love of liberty produced some noble expressions, such as,
"Liberty is a possession on which no evaluation can be placed," and
"Freedom is beloved above all things."

The Destruction of Roman Liberty 

Yet this love of liberty was destroyed by Diocletian in the
interest of tax compliance, a new Roman god. What is amazing about
Diocletian's decree that enslaved the Romans is that it came like
our modern tax laws, which are proclaimed with high-sounding
preambles like "tax fairness," "tax equity," "deficit reduction,"
and other noteworthy purposes. Here are the words Diocletian used
as a preamble to his decree that enslaved the Roman world:

Diocletian and Maximian . . . most noble Caesars, having learned
that the levies of the public taxes are being made haphazardly, so
that some persons are let off lightly and others overburdened, have
decided to root out this most evil and baneful practice for the
benefit of their provincials and to issue a deliverance-bringing
rule to which the taxes shall conform. . . .

This so-called "deliverance-bringing rule" was simple. Every Roman
taxpayer was bound to his job. His right to travel or change jobs
was gone. If he was a shoemaker, he was bound to be a shoemaker and
his son also had to be a shoemaker. Farmers had to be farmers, and
their sons as well. They were also bound to the farms they worked
and lived on. All this to ensure the collection of taxes. Those who
fled were called fugitives and would be forcibly returned if
caught. It wasn't just workers and farmers who were bound. A member
of a city council, for example, would be returned if he fled,
providing he was caught within twenty years after having left his
post. It is no wonder we read in Roman records of this period, "Let
us flee to the lands of the barbarians where we may live as free
men." It was also during this time that the temples for the Goddess
of Liberty disappeared as well as her image on the coins of the
empire.

Tax Tyranny in the U.S.

Our tax-makers today, led by the tax-and-spending gang on the U.S.
House Ways and Means Committee, have over the past thirty years,
with each new tax law, shackled the American people to the tax
system, not unlike Diocletian to ensure the collection of taxes.
These tax-makers would do well to look back into history, and not
crow about their achievement. What they have really achieved is to
bind the American taxpayer to the fiscus, almost Roman style. We
may be able to move and change jobs or change banks or investments,
but everything we do is recorded for the collection of taxes.
Diocletian didn't have computers or tax identifying numbers, so he
did the next best thing, he ordered everyone to stay put, where
they could be watched.

This observation in my book For Good and Evil may have ominous
shadows for our day:

The emperors of the fourth century, and above all Diocletian . . .
took their duties seriously, and they were animated by the
sincerest love of their country. Their aim was to save the Roman
Empire, and they achieved it. . . . They never asked whether it was
worthwhile to save the Roman Empire in order to make a vast prison
for scores of millions of men.

Today, we are imprisoned by the all-seeing eye of the tax bureau;
banks are subject to outrageous fines if they don't snitch on their
customers; everything that goes through your bank account is
photographed for Big Brother to see; every transaction with your
securities broker is reported; all dividends, interest, and
royalties are reported; all capital gains are reported; all real-
estate transactions are reported; all funds paid for services are
reported, even babysitters and part-time help, like the boy who
mows your lawn on Saturday. Cash in even modest amounts is
reported, both within the country and when leaving or entering the
country. In short, the nation is covered with an almost perfect
system of espionage, much to the delight of the IRS. On top of all
this massive surveillance, there are over 150 penalties to punish
you for noncompliance with the law or its administration, however
innocent. The final cap is a system of vague criminal statues that
are as savage as anything ever known in even the darkest periods of
our national history.

The ancient Egyptians rulers would envy our system. Everywhere the
scribes of the pharaoh were snooping, inspecting and recording for
the tax bureau. The Egyptian languages did not even have a word for
liberty. Even the eggs in the nests of the pigeons and chickens
were recorded. Like our system, nothing was beyond the surveillance
of the scribes.

Thirty years ago, our tax system was in a large measure an honor
system, not a spy system. The only information return was the W-2,
and this was for taxpayers so they could claim a refund at the end
of the year. The first audit I experienced as a young attorney was
with a veteran IRS agent. He began with these words, "Ours is an
honor system, which is the only way it will work in a free
society." 

Today, the honor part is gone. Does that mean the free society is
gone as well? Eric Hoffer, the San Francisco longshoreman-turned-
philosopher, in his book The Passionate State of Mind said, "There
is a large measure of totalitarianism even in the freest of free
societies." It is not too difficult to determine where that "large
measure" can be found in the United States. We are even out of step
with most of Western civilization.

We might compare our draconian tax laws and totalitarian intrusions
with our neighbor of the north, Canada. Hardly a low-tax country,
its taxes are considerably more than ours, yet their compliance
costs are about one-half of ours; i.e., for every dollar they spend
for enforcement, they collect twice as much as we do, and yet our
IRS keeps clamoring for more money. In addition, the vast system of
espionage we administer for compliance is nonexistent in Canada.
Banks don't snitch one word and there are few information returns.
Nor are there the penalties or savage punishments we endure. Out of
1000 convictions for tax evasion, less than three people go to jail
and then only on a short-term basis. In the U.S., just about every
tax-evader goes to jail, which requires reduced jail terms for
vicious criminals who endanger all of us. Obviously, the government
cares more about protecting its revenue than it does about the
safety of its citizens from psychopathic criminals.

Freedom and Taxation

The most important problem of our day, never mentioned by tax
experts or members of Congress, is not the question of tax rates
and exemptions, but the destruction of liberty by the all-seeing
eye of Big Brother IRS and the savage penalties and punishments
used for the god of tax compliance. This is the most important
struggle of our age between citizen and government. The outcome
will determine the liberties our children will inherit from us in
the next century.

The course of our civilization appears to be following the final
era of the Roman Empire, with citizens in bondage to the tax
system. This bondage in Rome was instituted against the spiritual
grain of Roman history and destroyed the liberty of a once-free
society.  Edward Gibbon, in his monumental work, The Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire, described this period as a "perpetual
struggle between the powers of oppression and the arts of fraud."
But Gibbon was wrong. For the average Roman taxpayer, the struggle
was short-lived: they, their children, and their children's
children were shackled to the tax system. This bondage of the once-
free Roman was the tax man's final victory over the extensive
evasions and flight that had endangered the emperor's revenue.

Similar conditions exist today. Except for the very few, most
taxpayers cannot hope to win against the awesome powers of the IRS.
As the United States government achieves its final victory over the
liberty of the vast majority of citizens, we may not be shackled to
our jobs like the later Romans, but all indications are that the
earnings of our jobs and everything else will be shackled to the
state.

Will we end up as citizen-serf taxpayers like the Romans? The
current direction of our tax system, with its all-encompassing
surveillance, coupled with savage punishments and penalties unknown
in Western civilization elsewhere, is making a neo-serfdom a
reality. The struggle between communism and democracy may be over,
but the choice now is between liberty and bondage. Throughout most
of history, liberty has not been lost to foreign invaders, but to
the very government that was supposed to protect it. 

Charles Adams, a Freedom Daily subscriber, is the author of Fight,
Flight, Fraud: The Story of Taxation and For Good and Evil: The
Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization. 

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