Our Individual Freedoms Are Being Taxed Away by Robert Socha

The miraculously conceived separation of powers enabled these United States to endure, at least in name, these 247 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence or 236 years since the adoption of our Constitution. This separation enabled the states to govern their affairs as mini republics within the Republic and the severely limited federal government to keep us as a formidable power. Lest we forget, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments encoded the right of the People’s sovereignty over affairs not explicitly delineated in the text.

Tragically, 1913 effectively killed the liberties enshrined in that venerable text through the passage of the 16th and 17th Amendments and the signing of the Federal Reserve Act into law. The 16th Amendment allowed the government to tax its citizens, effectively making them wards of the state because as time has progressed and with the ever-reaching power of the IRS, who compel, by the threat of incarceration and confiscation, American citizens to pay monies we earned in fear of losing the very liberty the federal government is constitutionally sworn to protect and defend. Additionally, the 17th Amendment severely limited state sovereignty by changing the election of Senators from the state legislature as defined in Article 1 Section 3 of the Constitution to a popular vote, enabling career politicians to gain and maintain unimaginable power and wealth and restricting the States’ influence in Washington. Lastly, the creation of the Federal Reserve supersedes the Constitution’s minting provision. It puts the control of our monetary policy in the hands of a private institution creating a behemoth manipulating monetary policy that favors wealth and consolidation of power.

The temptation to be rich has lured many men into error and pierced them with many pains, especially maintaining their attainment at any cost. It caused men to make such an astonishing error in judgment that they mutilated the very government providing an avenue for men to self-govern. It also suggests failure and inadequacy to those of us who have not attained unimaginable wealth, which is why Paul encouraged Timothy to be content. The lust for wealth and power is never satisfied and has perverted the Executive office to impose its will through edict, circumventing the legislative process. Executive Orders have severely strained the separation of powers that infighting and kangaroo courts are constantly investigating, arguing, and exposing but never coming to accountability. Often, the ones exposing duplicity (Breitbart) or held accountable (Epstein) are found suicided, inflaming the People’s distrust.

Deceitful hearts, especially in the executive offices in both Washington, D.C. and state capitals too, who enlist the judiciary to wage war on their political opponents, have so poisoned our institutions, especially these past three years, that the common man sees the usurpation insufferable. The pent-up frustration, especially with the Federal Government’s incessant expansion, is boiling; there has been and will be blood.

Benjamin Franklin warned us when exhorting the men gathered at the Constitutional Convention to “put their hand to this instrument” that the government, the best he felt could be devised, would last for some time, but the people’s corruption will end in a despotic government. We have seen the first fruits of despotism in the halls of D.C. for decades and are watching the alarming acceleration of America’s decline from the air-conditioned comfort of our cars and homes. The corruption and manipulation of the public trust are so profoundly embedded in the halls of Congress that many do not even recognize their faults and continue to ensure the American experiment does not outlive other Republics.

Without the Judeo-Christian ethics convicting America to police world politics through restraint and military might, other nations have risen to defy her majesty and, forgetting the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, may unleash that heretofore unfathomable winter. What fireball must ignite to remind us to restrain man’s destructive power? The Holy Writ contains actual restraint; obedience to God.

Optimism hopes that over time, with the right people pressing the right buttons, we can reign in an unrestrained judiciary, convict the legislature to put the rights of the people first, and trust the executive’s judgment to submit to the Constitution’s chains. Unfortunately, the unfettered growth of government institutions, the creation of unaccountable agencies, and trusting in the military-industrial complex’s chariots and horses to protect and defend us has only enabled the unrestricted expansion of power held by very few, drawing civilization to the culmination of Scripture.

We must flee the things that so easily beset us and pursue the One who was, and is, and is to come. We must endeavor to keep our eyes from entertaining darkness and our hearts from entertaining evil so we can speak life from the abundance of our hearts. The decay of Western ideals grounded in Scripture demands we know the very Word rejected by the culture it helped fashion and form. We must put our hand to the plow, not look back, and not be anxious about these worldwide perils, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”