Did the U.S. Government Make Itself Illegal in 1865?
The language of the 13th Amendment is pretty clear.
Section one of the 13th Amendment reads as follows:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Let us take a look at the characteristics of slavery and involuntary servitude. Both of these…
force people to labor against their will,
force people to labor for the benefit of another,
force people into an arrangement they did not choose,
forcibly compel a person’s actions and choices, and
impose punishments for resistance or attempts to escape.
Perhaps we might forge a distinction between slavery and involuntary servitude and say that slavery also creates a condition in which one person is legally “owned” by another. Let us set that aside for the moment and just focus on the five characteristics above.
Force people to labor against their will…
Everyone pays different amounts of taxes, but when you factor in federal, state, and local; income, sales, and capital gains; fees, tariffs, property taxes, and payroll taxes…everyone pays something. Let us say you add it all up and figure out that you pay 40% of your total yearly income in taxes (not at all an uncommon figure). That means that you are working for the government right up until about Memorial Day every year.
Yes, technically they do not force you to labor. You could avoid income and payroll taxes by not working. You could avoid property taxes by living in a dumpster. You could avoid tariffs, fees, and sales taxes by never buying anything, and solely begging for food and other physical items you need. And of course you won’t be investing for your future, so you can avoid capital-gains taxes too. You win!
This is obviously a Hobson’s Choice. Government is absolutely forcing you to labor. And it is obviously against your will—otherwise, they would not need to use the threat of violence collect taxes.
Force people to labor for the benefit of another…
Government uses some of your money to keep itself in business. That benefits government employees and contractors. Government takes some of your money and distributes it to others, for those others’ sole and exclusive benefit. Those others may be welfare recipients, connected corporations, favored industries, people in Minnesota using tax breaks to weatherize their homes, or anyone else. It’s ‘democracy,’ after all—the sky is the limit. And the recipients usually end up being the political allies of those doing to (re)distributing. Imagine that.
You are absolutely being forced to labor for the benefit of others.
Force people into an arrangement they did not choose…
The mythology says that you chose all this—that voting is ‘consent,’ and that your agreement to participate in the ‘social contract’ is ‘implied.’ Think about all this for 30 seconds and you will realize that you chose none of it. You signed nothing. You agreed to nothing. You were born in a place, and the people who have a monopoly on the ‘legal’ use of violence in that place became your masters. Period.
Forcibly compel a person’s actions and choices…
First, recognize that not all force is the same. There is coercive force, which is initiated to achieve some particular end: to control, dominate, tyrannize, acquire resources, etc.; and there is protective force, which is deployed in response to, and to defend against, coercive force. If all government ever did was deploy protective force against aggressive individuals, that would be one thing. But they initiate coercive force all the time, in a thousand different ways.
Set aside the big one—taxation, which is used for all sorts of purposes that go way beyond rights-protection. They also initiate force to control your behavior, coerce certain choices, and prevent various private activities. They make you get a business license to braid hair. They determine what sorts of products you are allowed to buy. They determine who you can engage in consensual activities with, and how much money you can leave your heirs. They interfere with your medical choices.
Start thinking of your own examples and you’ll be at it all day.
Impose punishments for resistance or attempts to escape…
Resist any of this and you will get to see the punishment firsthand. No question there. You cannot simply refuse to comply. The government will have its pound of flesh.
So what about escape? Can you get out of any of this?
You certainly cannot say, “I withdraw my consent to be a part of this” and then become a free man on your own land. Well, you can say it, but if you say it loud enough, the ATF will come and burn you alive.
You cannot get together with others and declare your intention to secede and form a new polity. Well, again, you can, but government will wage war to stop you. At this point, even if a whole state decides to leave, Washington will likely see to it that they rue the day they even mentioned it. The notion that the states created (and can leave) the Union was clearly understood at our Founding, but has long since been disparaged and forgotten.
And if you make any attempt to emigrate, you will just end up in another land where all of this same stuff is the case, to one degree or another.
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We could go even deeper and get into a discussion about whether or not this arrangement also qualifies as one of people being “owned” by government, and thus being, in some sense, its slaves. But we do not need to. The 13th amendment declares involuntary servitude to be illegal in the United States, and yet the United States government is clearly subjecting the people under its dominion to involuntary servitude.
Tell me I am wrong.
Saying that what government does is legitimate because government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a given territory is not an answer—it’s a tautology. Saying that this is just how things are is a copout. Perhaps you can come up with a better argument. I’d love to hear it.
If you want to say that this is how things have to be because you do not know of any better option, at least that is a starting point for a discussion of what other options might be out there. But that also means that you have conceded that government really did make itself illegal in 1865.
And that’s a great place to start.
https://open.substack.com/pub/2ndsmartestguyintheworld/p/repost-memorandum-of-law-the-legality?r=png04&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
A striking statement from a former IRS Commissioner who resigned after concluding that the income tax was a violation of the 4th Amendment.