Wretched Hereditary Bondage - Commentary by Steve Scroggins

Steve Scroggins

Steve Scroggins is a volunteer contributor to the Georgia Heritage Council who lives in Macon. He is the deranged creative force behind the X-Files parodies.

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Wretched Hereditary Bondage – Commentary by Steve Scroggins, 3/25/2010

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them"
--Thomas Jefferson

The recent passage of the ObamaCare health bill is just one more event in a "long train of abuses pursuing invariably the same object"--- to effectively repeal the 13th Amendment.

The suggestion that I have a "right" to health care paid for by you is absurd. But no more absurd, I suppose, than insisting that I have a right to my property, or a right to the fruits of my own labor. These old antiquated principles just don't work in modern progressive America.

Amendment 13 - Slavery Abolished (Ratified 12/6/1865)
1. 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.
2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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.

American tax slaves work four to five months of each year to pay their masters their due. We surrender more that medieval serfs; we’re more on par with 19th century slaves.
Tax Freedom Day - taxfoundation.org
Slavery, Apologies and Duty - Steve Scroggins, 3/16/07
Compassionate Tyranny - Paul Craig Roberts, 6/25/02
Tax Slaves Existing for Government - Paul Craig Roberts, 1/02/01

"The U.S. has constructed a society, the first in modern history, in which native-born productive citizens are the tax slaves of the welfare and immigrant lobbies. The 35 million taxpayers who carry the burden of the income tax have no more claim to their income than did medieval serfs or 19th century black slaves." --Paul Craig Roberts, from Compassionate Tyranny, 6/25/02

On October 1, 1862, the LONDON SPECTATOR correctly assessed the Emancipation Proclamation: "The principle [of the Proclamation] is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States government." Likewise, progressives hold that the principle of the 13th Amendment is not that involuntary servitude shall not exist, but rather that such servitude shall exist only as the almighty D.C. government sees fit.

The new slave masters don't claim to actually own the bodies of taxpayers and citizens. But they do claim substantial ownership of their property and incomes (with an option to take more if needed). We slaves can continue to rattle our chains and sing spirituals down on the plantation. Or we can take action for real "hope & change."

We still have the power to evict 435 House members in November and one third of the Senate. We slaves would have their undivided attention if we totally "cleaned House" at the next election. Without "shock and awe" in November, nothing will change until the D.C. slave masters follow the USSR and other utopian tyrants into bankruptcy.

The obligations on we slaves would not end in November. We would have to continually turn over the compost pile in D.C. every two years from now on until the point was driven home with sufficient force. It will take years of training and perpetual vigilance on our part to ensure that those people in D.C. understand how government should really operate: We the People are the masters and they are our servants. Whenever the government stops serving the people as a tool for justice and preserving liberty, it's up to us to change it.

"...to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." --Declaration of Independence, 1776.
"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit." --James Madison, Federalist #51, 1788.

Steve Scroggins is Commander of the Lt. James T. Woodward Camp 1399, Sons of Confederate Veterans, in Warner Robins, GA. He is the deranged creative force behind the X-Files parodies.