Taxation is hardly the price we pay for civilization, as Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed. In fact, taxes are often an attack on civilization, undermining the peaceful exchanges and the division of labor that makes civilization possible.
Is any taxation compatible with a free society? Yes, if it is indirect and mild, as the framers of the Constitution knew. What horrified them was the idea of direct federal taxes on individuals. Such a system, which they outlawed, could lead to tyranny.
How prescient they were. Since we amended the Constitution to allow income taxes, our government has grown into a monstrous welfare-warfare state that, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, is eating out the substance of the people and to an extent that George III could only have dreamed of.
Working in the tradition of the framers is attorney Michael Louis Minns. He has defended many Americans against the tax police, and argued for a fair and constitutional system in place of the personal income tax.
The case studies outlined in this book should make you angry and determined to change a system that wreaked such havoc on the lives and liberties of so many good Americans.
If we are to pass a free and prosperous society on to our children and grandchildren, we must abolish the federal income tax and bind down the central government once again with the bands of steel that the framers forged.
That is a great task, but surely one worthy of all our effort. For its goal is nothing less than the restoration of the original America, and her freedom and promise.
Ron Paul
U.S. Congressman from 1976 to 1984 in the 22nd District,
U.S. Congressman 1997 to Present in the 14th District,
Doctor of Medicine, specializing in Ob/Gyn,
and Author