"The plain language of the 13th Amendment from 1865 seems to suggest that involuntary servitude shall not exist in the United States, except as punishment for crime. Yet, since the 1930s, the government in D.C. continues to pass laws which in effect say that your property and mine, your labor and mine, can be taken (by force if necessary) and given to other Americans so that collectivist progressives and D.C. politicians can experience the thrill of vicarious charity. For those people, warm and fuzzy feelings outrank dusty old principles and God-given rights." --Steve Scroggins, from Wretched Hereditary Bondage, 3/25/2010

Taxes are on the minds of Americans as another tax day comes and goes. According to the Rasmussen Report, a majority of us are unhappy with the tax rates. Rasmussen reported recently that 60% of American taxpayers believe they are being taxed too much. That frustration will only expand in 2011 when the Bush tax cuts are set to expire, resulting in even more taxes being taken from our nation's workers.

This is not good news on several fronts. Many financial experts are concerned that a new tax burden just as our economy is showing signs of recovery, will bring the recovery to a screeching halt. The term “double dip recession” is starting to appear on the TV talk shows. A study of past tax policy reveals that tax increases always have a negative effect on the economy, and 2011 will likely be the same.

We Americans have a tendency to rebel over tax and spend policy. The colonies rebelled against England due to their tax program. Remember “No Taxation without Representation?” How about the original Tea Party in Boston Harbor? The American Revolution was a direct result of what the people saw as unfair and excessive taxes.

Then there were the tax protest of the mid 19th century. Under the influence of Northern business interest, Congress passed a series of import taxes that fell heavily on the southern states. Then Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina led his state into an effort to “nullify” these taxes within that state. Congress agreed to reduce the scope of the tax as a compromise. But when the Radical Republicans won the Congress in 1860, they immediately reinstated the punishing taxes. As a result, the seven cotton states who were most heavily affected by the tax seceded from the union and formed the Confederate States.

If it be not slavery, where lies the partition of the interests that has led at last to actual separation of the Southern from the Northern States? ...Every year, for some years back, this or that Southern state had declared that it would submit to this extortion only while it had not the strength for resistance. With the election of Lincoln and an exclusive Northern party taking over the federal government, the time for withdrawal had arrived ... The conflict is between semi-independent communities [in which] every feeling and interest [in the South] calls for political partition, and every pocket interest [in the North] calls for union ... So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils.... [T]he quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel." --Henry Morley, All the Year Round Weekly Journal (UK), Dec. 28, 1861, founded and edited by Charles Dickens