What Are We Celebrating?

My fiancé and I, like most people, love to keep our house both clean and attractive, inside and out. We especially take pride in the outward appearance we have created for our modest dwelling in a jam-packed section of central New Jersey, where houses are seemingly stacked upon houses and neighbors are essentially within arm’s reach from one’s window to the other’s.  My specialty is in lawn maintenance as well as with our vegetable garden, while her craft lies in the aesthetics of flower cultivation and other ornamental items. She is near obsessed with those decorative little garden flags. We agree on everything except one crucial detail: the inclusion, or lack thereof, of a star-spangled banner.

 

Surprisingly, given my extreme libertarian beliefs, she gets – or maybe just tolerates – me most of the time but, in this post-9/11 world of over-the-top contrived patriotism, she does not understand my conscious desire to leave that cloth totally absent from our property. But I do not fault her for that. The blame for her – and the vast majority of this nation’s – ignorance of facts lies squarely upon the shoulders of government and its public mis-education system. From a very young age we are taught to idolize this nation and everything it does, never to question anything, and never to know the truth unless pursued through independent study.

 

Our young minds are immersed in a history which casually evades the rigorous debates and fights surrounding the main point of its founding. The Boston Tea Party is as in-depth as most history classes go into educating children on the nature of the tax revolt leading to 1776, and even in that instance more is made out of the costume party than the actual substance of the event. The prescient writings of Patrick Henry and the Anti-Federalists are absent to the point of having never existed at all, and the Bill of Rights is mentioned only in passing and just as a reminder for the standardized test on the period. The injustices done upon native populations are – pardon the pun – white-washed over with celebrations of the notion of Manifest Destiny and with championing the blood-spillers as heroes. The fact that slavery was essentially rubber-stamped by being included in the founding document is never ever talked about. The ardent fights over monetary policy and banking are outright ignored. The tax/duties/impost debates and details leading to the Civil War are never discussed, the pretenses of the bloodshed are completely falsified, and the war crimes of the party of Lincoln fail to be mentioned. The imperialist visions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are never countered with the non-interventionist feeling that existed at the founding and was espoused throughout the early republic. The Constitution is only ever mentioned in earnest when the 13th and 19th Amendments are discussed. The table is set from the very beginning for the embracing of an all-encompassing, omnipotent State.

 

This truth is evident each and every day. The examples of it smack us in the face every time we turn around. At 4 years old, my now 6 year old knew who the president was. Children are being taught statist idolatry in pre-school! What happened to learning about primary colors and basic socialization skills? After the Hobby Lobby decision broke the headlines, I spent the entire day arguing with a college-age family member’s friends regarding the nature of rights and how government distorts the market. I was literally bombarded by baby-faced, barely post-pubescent, know-it-alls claiming, in essence, that people have the right to the productivity of other people. These children are so brainwashed, it is beyond terrifying. They have absolutely no clue of the rich libertarian history which brought an empire to its knees.

 

This all leads to me, each and every year at this time, questioning what the hell people are celebrating. It would probably be more sincere for everyone to pack away their red, white, and blue’s and just say they’re excited for a three-day weekend and the consequent barbeques. There is not a single bit of true acknowledgment of what July 4th stands for, and if people are indeed claiming that they are celebrating such, they obviously have no clue about their own history. That hallowed date was about freeing oneself from an oppressive and overbearing government. The impetus for the violent split of colonies from parent-country stemmed from a complete and utter rejection of taxation; taxation which was the result of expenses incurred in years and years of imperialistic wars levied by the British crown. Oh, the irony. Tell me again what you are celebrating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That video sums it all up. 

 

The taxes imposed by the British were unexceptional, with total tax liability estimates ranging from 1-2% of income in New England. Think about that for one second, and then let’s put it in perspective. WorldBank.org  put US GDP at $16.2 trillion for fiscal year 2012, the Tax Policy Center  lists tax revenue for that year at 15.2% of GDP, US News  reported total population at the outset of that year at 312.8 million, and Census.gov  put the US median household income at $51,371. Doing a little math, the calculations reveal that the tax receipts equaled $2.43 trillion, the share of which is $7,768 per person based upon the population figure, which is then equal to a burden of 15.1% per person of the median household income. 15.1%! And if you break the population number down further into the total working population and total working population with an actual tax liability, the numbers get even scarier.

 

Now, you can argue that this number includes corporate taxes and therefore does not give a fair representation, however that would be a very ignorant contention for two reasons . One, the corporate tax paid is taken from profits which, if they were not eaten by government, would be paid out as salaries to owners and/or in dividends to stockholders. Two, the taxes businesses pay are not completely assumed by ownership and accordingly will be factored into their costs, and as such are represented by lower wages to workers. A corporation is not an acting individual. The costs have to be paid by someone, and therefore the tax on corporations is highly relevant to the discussion of the tax burden resting upon the shoulders of the mass of Americans. 

 

Keep in mind that the above numbers do not take State and local taxes into consideration, which would absolutely elevate the individual burden even higher!

 

We pay, at minimum, almost 8 times the taxes that caused the founders of this country to revolt. Tell me again, what are you celebrating? And as if taxes aren’t enough, we are overwhelmingly being occupied by a militaristic police-state, the likes of which would probably have put fear in even Alexander Hamilton. The Bill of Rights includes an amendment barring the requirement to quarter troops in one’s home, as the British had used quartering as a means to attempt to police the population and intimidate them into subservience. Nowadays such quarter is made completely unnecessary by the creation of mini-militaries in almost every town equipped with weapons of warfare and trained in the tactics of soldiers. The Intolerable Acts have nothing on what we live through. The heavy boot of George III is being lowered upon our necks 239 years later, and rather than say enough is enough, we cower, we acquiesce, and we throw a senseless annual bash. 

 

As we walk through Lowes on our way to pick up fertilizer or a new garden flag, we inevitably – and especially now – walk right past a gaudy display of American flags. It is a guarantee that my fiancé will ask, “can we finally get one now” to which I calmly shake my head and continue to the garden section. I do not say that I think that flag is meaningless, or that it is a worn old symbol of long forgotten ideals. I do not say that I cannot share Henry Ward Beecher’s reverence for it . This is one of those topics where she, nor most people, can tolerate my radical libertarian opinion. However I will not relinquish my beliefs, and I will seemingly always ask, what the hell is everyone celebrating?

 

- Chris Lewis  07/5/14 08:00 AM CT