Some of the oldtimers looked at him like he was crazy. “You must be a stranger in these parts,” they said. “I am. I’m from North Dakota,” said the stranger. “In the Okefenokee Swamp are thousands of wild hogs.” one old man explained. “A man who goes into the swamp by himself asks to die!” He lifted up his leg. “I lost half my leg here, to the pigs of the swamp.” Another old fellow said, “Look at the cuts on me; look at my arm bit off!

Those pigs have been free since the Revolution, eating snakes and rooting out roots and fending for themselves for over a hundred years. They’re wild and they’re dangerous. You can’t trap them. No man dare go into the swamp by himself.” Every man nodded his head in agreement.The old trapper said, “Thank you so much for the warning. Now could you direct me to the swamp?” They said, “Well, yeah, it’s due south — straight down the road.” But they begged the stranger not to go, because they knew he’d meet a terrible fate. He said, “Sell me ten sacks of corn, and help me load it in the wagon.” And they did.

Then the old trapper bid them farewell and drove on down the road. The townsfolk thought they’d never see him again. Two weeks later the man came back. He pulled up to the general store, got down off the wagon, walked in and bought ten more sacks of corn. After loading it up he went back down the road toward the swamp.Two weeks later he returned and again bought ten sacks of corn. This went on for a month. And then two months, and three. Every week or two the old trapper would come into town on a Saturday morning, load up ten sacks of corn, and drive off south into the swamp.

The stranger soon became a legend in the little village and the subject of much speculation. People wondered what kind of devil had possessed this man, that he could go into the Okefenokee by himself and not be consumed by the wild and free hogs.One morning the man came into town as usual. Everyone thought he wanted more corn. He got off the wagon and went into the store where the usual group of men were gathered around the stove.

He took off his gloves. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I need to hire about ten or fifteen wagons. I need twenty or thirty men. I have six thousand hogs out in the swamp, penned up, and they’re all hungry. I’ve got to get them to market right away.” “You’ve WHAT in the swamp?” asked the storekeeper, incredulously. “I have six thousand hogs penned up. They haven’t eaten for two or three days, and they’ll starve if I don’t get back there to feed and take care of them.”One of the oldtimers said, “You mean you’ve captured the wild hogs of the Okefenokee?” “That’s right.” “How did you do that? What did you do?” the men urged, breathlessly. One of them exclaimed, “But I lost my arm!” “I lost my brother!” cried another. “I lost my leg to those wild boars!” chimed a third.

The trapper said, “Well, the first week I went in there they were wild all right. They hid in the undergrowth and wouldn’t come out. I dared not get off the wagon. So I spread corn along behind the wagon. Every day I’d spread a sack of corn. The old pigs would have nothing to do with it.”"But the younger pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn than it was to root out roots and catch snakes. So the very young began to eat the corn first. I did this every day. Pretty soon, even the old pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn. After all, they were all free; they were not penned up. They could run off in any direction they wanted at any time.”"The next thing was to get them used to eating in the same place all the time.

So I selected a clearing, and I started putting the corn in the clearing. At first they wouldn’t come to the clearing. It was too far. It was too open. It was a nuisance to them.” “But the very young decided that it was easier to take the corn in the clearing than it was to root out roots and catch their own snakes. And not long thereafter, the older pigs also decided that it was easier to come to the clearing every day.”"And so the pigs learned to come to the clearing every day to get their free corn. They could still subsidize their diet with roots and snakes and whatever else they wanted. After all, they were all free. They could run in any direction at any time. There were no bounds upon them.” “The next step was to get them used to fence posts.

So I put fence posts all the way around the clearing. I put them in the underbrush so that they wouldn’t get suspicious or upset. After all, they were just sticks sticking up out of the ground, like the trees and the brush. The corn was there every day. It was easy to walk in between the posts, get the corn, and walk back out.”"This went on for a week or two. Shortly they became very used to walking into the clearing, getting the free corn, and walking back out through the fence posts.” “The next step was to put one rail down at the bottom. I also left a few openings, so that the older, fatter pigs could walk through the openings and the younger pigs could easily jump over just one rail. After all, it was no real threat to their freedom or independence. They could always jump over the rail and flee in any direction at any time.”"Now I decided that I wouldn’t feed them every day.

I began to feed them every other day. On the days I didn’t feed them the pigs still gathered in the clearing. They squealed, and they grunted, and they begged and pleaded with me to feed them. But I only fed them every other day. And I put a second rail around the posts.” “Now the pigs became more and more desperate for food. Because now they were no longer used to going out and digging their own roots and finding their own food. They now needed me. They needed my corn every other day. So I trained them that I would feed them every day if they came in through a gate. And I put up a third rail around the fence. But it was still no great threat to their freedom, because there were several gates and they could run in and out at will.”"Finally I put up the fourth rail. Then I closed all the gates but one, and I fed them very, very well. Yesterday I closed the last gate. And today I need you to help me take these pigs to market.”

— Leonard E. Read

There is no evidence of formal links between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq prior to the 2003 war, a US Senate report says.

The finding is contained in a 2005 CIA report released by the Senate’s Intelligence Committee on Friday.

US President George W Bush has said that the presence of late al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a link.

Opposition Democrats say the report has harmed Mr Bush’s case for going to war.

The BBC’s Justin Webb in Washington says that the US president has again and again tried to connect the war in Iraq, which most Americans think was a mistake, with the so-called war on terror, which has the support of the nation.

The report comes as Mr Bush makes a series of speeches on the “war on terror” to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks.

Requests rejected

The report is the second part of the committee’s analysis of pre-war intelligence. The first dealt with CIA failings in its assessment of Iraq’s weapons programme.

The committee concluded that the CIA had evidence of several instances of contacts between the Iraqi authorities and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s but that these did not add up to a formal relationship.

It added that the government “did not have a relationship, harbour or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates”.

It said that Iraq and al-Qaeda were ideologically poles apart.

“Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support,” it said.

The Senate report added that the Iraqi regime had repeatedly rejected al-Qaeda requests for meetings.

It also deals with the role played by inaccurate information supplied by Iraqi opposition groups in the run-up to the war.

‘Devastating indictment’

White House spokesman Tony Snow told the Associated Press news agency the report contained “nothing new”.

“In 2002 and 2003, members of both parties got a good look at the intelligence we had and they came to the very same conclusions about what was going on,” he said.

But Democrat Senator Carl Levin described the report as a “devastating indictment” of the administration’s attempts to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda.

Zarqawi, who is believed to be responsible for numerous killings and kidnappings in Iraq since the war, was killed in a US raid in June.

Saddam Hussein and several close associates are standing trial for the killings of Shias in the village of Dujail in 1982 and of more than 100,000 Kurds in 1988.

Download the full report (29kb) from the website of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee.

“We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money.” ~ statesman and patriot Daniel Webster

There are over 50 million Americans currently receiving handouts from the government. Today we take an odyssey into just one aspect of the handout “rabbit hole” and the destruction it wreaks upon recipients, not to mention those footing the bill.

The following are true stories. I haven’t intentionally chosen the worst-case scenarios. These are just the three relatively young people I happen to know who live off taxpayers via Social Security. I’ve tried to present the facts as free from judgment as possible. You can conclude for yourself how they have fared through the government’s largesse and what the odds are of the countless others on the dole faring any better. Bags have been provided for your convenience if you should feel yourself becoming ill. All aboard!

Modifying Terms

First I should clarify terminology. The word “welfare” has made an interesting transformation in our culture, thanks to the spin doctors in Washington , D.C. What was once an innocuous word in the preamble to the Constitution meaning “well being,” it originally referred to the restraints on government’s attempts to stop us from exercising the freedom of each of us to pursue our own.

After decades of inappropriate fondling by big government, it has been magically morphed into a loaded, unlimited carte-blanche vehicle for the power-mad. As usual, Welfare, with a capital “W” is disguised as a benefit. Actually, it robs us and destroys poor and sick people’s chances of securing “the blessings of liberty,” all the while feathering the nests of layer upon layer of bureaucrats. Only a politician with unlimited funding and power could conceive of something so self-serving, destructive and dastardly as the public assistance umbrella that we have come to understand “Welfare” to be today.

Meet Jim

Jim is an obese 34-year-old, unemployed factory worker. He injured his back on the job several years ago and became addicted to painkillers. He has collected Social Security for his disability for several years now. He smokes pot every day and sells it to help make ends meet. His apartment has become Party Central for young people who are drawn to it, even though he keeps a low profile. In all fairness, Jim does not “live large,” as they say.

Disability recipients are allowed to earn a small income without penalty, aside from what they are given. They are penalized if they earn “too much,” and are therefore highly motivated to curb their incomes or lie. How anyone can prevent themselves from earning too much to continue to qualify as “disabled” is a paradox for which only government insanity can create incentive. Buckle up – this ride goes inside-out and upside-down.

Through ingenuity and self-motivation, Jim has proven his ability to provide for himself by selling a product to people that they clearly want and will obtain one way or another despite his injury. If he had more motivation (hunger, for instance), it is possible that he could earn a good living for himself without so much as bending over, as many people do.

Without engaging an entire discussion on the futility and harm caused by the war on drugs, I will make only this one comment. Over one hundred people a year die in U.S. prisons from drug overdoses. If they can’t keep drugs out of the highest security facilities in the nation, how can they keep them out of a neighborhood or a nation? They answer is, they can’t. They never have and never will no matter how many billions of dollars and lives are lost because of it.

If the powers that be knew of the nature of Jim’s side job, we all know what would happen to him. As always, they get you coming and going, as my Dad used to say.

After years of living this hazy existence, Jim attempted suicide. He landed in the hospital and finally obtained the surgery necessary to repair his disc problem, all paid for, naturally, by the taxpayer. After recovery he was finally informed that in order to continue receiving disability benefits, he must attempt to look for a job. (As I said, this ride goes inside-out and upside-down.) Unfortunately, now times are tough in Metro Detroit and jobs are scarce.

Jim obviously has entrepreneurial tendencies. Without the War on Drugs, selling pot would not have been the most lucrative line of work available to a self-starter. Without layers of bureaucracy preventing entrepreneurs from getting started, anything could have been possible for someone who sees a need and decides to fill it. Without government limits on income, Jim could very well have been motivated to work hard enough to build a much different life for himself, one which does not make suicide an inviting option.

Forrest Carter seems to think that physical death is not the worst of it. “Do not feed my people. No matter how good your food is, when you feed them you destroy their spirit.” (from Cry Geronimo) No matter how good your food is? Welfare cheese hardly qualifies as good food.

Without government “assistance,” what might Jim’s (much less the taxpayer’s) situation be like today? If he had known there was no safety net, he may have been more motivated to have the surgery he needed while he still had health benefits from his employer. After recovery, he could have returned to his job. If his work was of value to his employer, he may have been able to move into a position that did not require back strain. Or he could have obtained some other kind of work elsewhere, provided he’d had a good employment record, the usual reward for conscientiousness. But with a convenient, free safety net in place, why not take some time off and see what happens?

There are no free lunches

There are myriad problems with safety nets. First, they are not free, not for the recipient and not for the taxpayer. As with all government programs, recipients become psychologically, if not physically, dependent on the dole, exacerbating their problems.

Handouts are not limited to poor or sick people. Quite the contrary! They permeate every aspect of American life, from farm subsidies to small business loans, home mortgages, banking, automobiles, airlines, education, health, empire building, etc. Lobbyists make a living obtaining taxpayer funds for private use. There is no aspect of American life unmolested by government. We are a sick nation because of it; a nation addicted to the use of force and every man, woman and child in the U.S. is on the hook to the tune of half a million dollars each in government debt for it, give or take a hundred thousand or so. There is no reason to assume that this number will be heading down any time soon. There are excellent reasons to assume it will rise.

Years ago I once filed for unemployment benefits. One week I did not look for work and said as much when I was asked where I had sought employment. The nice bureaucrat informed me that I should then write down the names of the places I should have looked for work and handed me my check. She knew the system and she knew it required warm bodies to keep it going. People comin’ all up in up there ‘n tellin’ the truth, well, that just don’t make the government wheels go ‘round!

Pain is unpleasant, but it is useful in that it can motivate a person to find a way to improve their circumstances. One old fellow I know, Leo, once spent a couple years of his early work life in a manufacturing environment. He realized he could never do it for the rest of his life and put himself through night school to become an engineer. He did well, also putting his six children through college.

The usefulness of pain is sacrificed when big government rushes in with other people’s money to interfere with the normal learning process of life and actually serves no one but government itself. Government is able to employ far more paper-pushers than it could if it had no “customers” for such products. Those paper-pushers also require health benefits, vacation and retirement packages. In fact, the average bureaucrat’s standard of living on average has surpassed Mr. and Mrs. Average Taxpayer by a two-to-one margin, with far, far greater job security.

Government breeds inertia. We see it in the faces of government employees at the DMV and post offices, we see it in the faces of recipients waiting in lines for their handouts at clinics and unemployment offices, and we see it in the empty eyes of children in government-run schools. This is why it outlaws drugs, to eliminate competition and grow itself via the War on Drugs all at once.

Meet Ted

His is a pitiful, true story of a guy dealt a lousy hand. At age 11, Ted became diabetic. He had to forego the simple, careless childhood pleasure of ice cream, candy and soda. Instead he had to learn to test his own blood sugar and inject himself with insulin accordingly.

Ted did well with all this back then, until his late teens when things began to fall apart. His parents had had a violent relationship, which ended abruptly one day when his Dad walked out never to return. He was 16 and felt that his Dad had not only abandoned his mother and their home, but himself as well. This was when his troubles really began.

He started experimenting with drinking, a worst-case scenario for a diabetic. Family pleas fell on deaf ears. Ted used to say he had the flu when anyone else was simply hung-over. I’m sure he felt much sicker than others after drinking excessively with alcohol’s affect on blood sugar.

Ted fell in love and married a woman to whom he seemed ill suited. He seemed very happy for a while until their relationship turned violent too. After a number of turbulent years, they were divorced and Ted relinquished the lion’s share of the assets to his ex-wife, for reasons possibly only the heart can understand. He later regretted it.

Ted started having bouts with depression. During them, he would not go to work, eat properly or even take his insulin for days at a time. Ted kept drinking and taking aim at himself with donuts and candy. He kept moving a treadmill from one apartment to another that had never felt the touch of a foot, exercise of a sort, I suppose. His health deteriorated rapidly over the next decade to the point where he’d had two heart attacks and developed a blind spot in one eye by the age of 35. He started dialysis for kidney failure before 40. Ted had had so many surgeries he now finds that he cannot sleep without Vicodin.

A year or so into dialysis, Ted started collecting disability. Dear reader, would you imagine that getting a handout would induce someone to take more responsibility for themselves, or less? Normally I would have to say that the answer must be “less.” Believe it or not, in this case the answer is a qualified “more.” After a bit longer on dialysis, Ted started to feel better and he returned to work full time. Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the story. He also kept collecting his disability pay while working, in an attempt to finally get ahead in life! Does this sound implausible or unusual?

Getting ahead means different things to different people. To you or me, it might mean having dental work done that you’ve been putting off, paying off debt, or setting aside savings for a rainy day. To Ted it meant new clothes and a new hobby – blackjack. Forget the dental work, there would be plenty of time and money for all that after he got settled. He had big plans for saving up a nest egg and buying a mobile home.

Ted had opted out of buying insurance to pay his medical expenses that were not covered by Medicare (which he could have afforded.) He eventually became the target of a lawsuit from the hospital for those unpaid bills, which he continues to rack up on a weekly basis. Economic times being what they are, the work soon dried up for Ted, and so too the financial plans.

Ted also opted out of auto insurance and drove without it. Recently, after neglecting to eat in a timely fashion, he got dizzy behind the wheel of his car and blacked out. He hit a parked car and wound up in the hospital for treatment. It was paid for at taxpayer expense along with those of the 90 million or so other Medicare/Medicaid recipient’s expenses.

I always feel sad when I think about Ted, witness his accelerated physical degeneration and sadder still to see it all in print. He was indeed dealt a “low pair” in the game of life. He also made many very poor choices and continues to do so, such as donuts for breakfast. (To be perfectly honest, I’d prefer donuts for breakfast too, but I know better than to eat them, and I’m not diabetic.)

When confronted, Ted innocently proclaims that his life is fine. There is no reason to consider making any changes at all. It would be a long shot to hope for any improvement in Ted’s health or its mounting cost to the rest of us. Well before retirement age, he will likely need permanent inpatient care.

Are you outraged yet? No? Maybe this will nail it for you. Of all the hundreds of millions of various forms of welfare dollars paid out yearly to over 50 million recipients, regardless of actual “need” or benefit, there are three times as many dollars distributed among mostly white, middle class layers of bureaucrats who manage the handout machine, all in an effort to simply keep the machine running. It needs recipients as grist for the mill.

Meet Susan

She is a good-hearted person who loves her children. After a number of years of being unhappily married, she decided to divorce her husband. Times being what they are in Metro Detroit, even though she is a hard worker, as a stay-at-home Mom she has struggled to find work that would pay her a decent wage. She also prefers to be home with her children when school is not in session, and such employment is difficult to find, as any Mom can attest.

Susan means well towards her children, but she is a very uptight person. She’s also quite bitter towards her ex-husband. She told me she had married him because her biological clock had been ticking and he had a steady job working for the postal service. This is hardly a good way to create an atmosphere for the most challenging undertaking as ever existed – raising children. In the old days, my Dad would have said “You’ve made your bed, now lay in it.” Not that she should remain in an unhappy marriage, but that she is responsible for the situation in which she now finds herself because it is the result of her own choices. Government safety nets distort reality, promote irresponsibility and create dependency.

Over the years Susan has developed IBS - Irritable Bowel Syndrome. (Some heartless cads might suggest the initials say it all.) I am a strong believer in the mind-body connection. How can stress not be a factor here, as it is shown to be in many other psychosomatic illnesses? You can probably guess that she eventually started collecting Social Security for her disability, as it is the path of least resistance.

Some people would question why Susan’s livelihood should now become the taxpayer’s problem. Most don’t, either because they are feminists who might say that she was married to a toad who should have become a prince when he said “I do,” or because the sheer force of numbers of people receiving handouts in this country is too great to fathom or fuss over one more. Others refuse, on principle, to doubt that welfare does indeed make life better for some people. Besides, it’s just not nice to suggest that in choosing whom to commit to, one should take great care and if one should choose poorly, it’s not the forced responsibility of taxpayers to pick up the pieces.

I’ve offered Susan simple, inexpensive solutions to her stress and bitterness. With improvement in her IBS, she could probably find work and support herself. She has rejected them on the basis that they require personal responsibility for one’s own happiness. She’d rather just blame her ex-husband and let the faceless masses pay.

Upon examination, is free money really helping her in any arguable way? If handouts were not an option, she would be forced to take responsibility for her own problems. They are not catastrophic.

What is free money teaching her children? ‘Do what you want, someone else will pick up the pieces, and you won’t even have to say “thank you.” Life will tailor itself to you!’ That message sentences children to a life of hard knocks.

I’ve come to believe that we create a lot of our own problems. I also believe that if someone is willing to step in and prevent us from experiencing the consequences of poor choices, we will never learn from them. This is the situation with government handouts. I’m not suggesting no one needs help at times, I am saying what government is doing is not only wrong, but unless the goal is dependency, it is not working. Repeatedly, time has shown that private charity, coupled with accountability on the part of the recipient, is the only effective strategy in making long-term improvements in quality of life, provided that change is what the recipient is indeed looking for.

It reminds me of the old joke: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.

Part of me would like to grab these people by the throat and shake them until their eyes rattle. Unfortunately, there are just too many of them. Aren’t we all caught with our foot in a trap? We’re all trying to build a life for ourselves with government stacked against us, too big to overcome, too well armed to fight and too rabid to even risk being bitten by. Government is like a vampire sucking the life out of the unsuspecting, and each bite creates one more whoring zombie after another.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed…with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” (from the Declaration of Independence . Read it here.)

We’re overdue. Government has become the prying eyes of the omnipotent state, molesting us at every turn in every way possible, leaving a trail of maimed and dead in its wake, while it picks up a head of steam you can see from the Middle East . All together now, can you say “abolish it?!”

Don’t ever suggest that federal bureaucrats are not smart. Take, for instance, the DEA, the federal agency that has the responsibility of waging the war on drugs, a war that has obviously failed to achieve its objective after 30 years of warfare, not to mention all the collateral violence that the drug war has spawned.

Amidst growing discussion and debate in the mainstream media on the libertarian idea of ending the war on drugs by legalizing drugs, guess what the DEA is using as a way to distract people’s attention away from that solution.

Yes, you guessed it! The DEA is employing the magic word, the word that gets everyone’s knees a-knockin’ — the word that causes them to pull the duct tape out and start sealing their windows — the word that induces them to beg the government to “temporarily” take away their freedoms.

Yes, the DEA is saying that the drug war is necessary because of … (drum roll) … terrorism!

Much like the snake-oil salesmen of old, the DEA is touring the country with a traveling exhibit in which a post–9/11 President Bush waving a flag is juxtaposed with an African-American woman lying in bed next to her baby as she smokes crack cocaine. There are also photos of the noted terrorist Osama bin Laden on the walls of the exhibit alongside noted drug dealer Pablo Escobar.

The irony of all this is that to the extent that there are terrorists financing the operations through drug sales, it’s a direct result of the exorbitant profits that the drug war produces, which would disintegrate with legalization. Thus, what the DEA officials fail to realize (or not) is that it is their own war that provides the monies to finance the terrorists. It’s just another perverse result of another perverse federal program.

According to the Washington Post, the exhibit claims that heroin sales supported the Taliban, while conveniently omitting not only that the Taliban regime opposed heroin production but also that heroin production has soared in the wake of the U.S. government’s invasion of Afghanistan to fight terrorism.

Of course, the sad part about this is that many Americans will walk through the exhibit and never figure any of this out. They’ll see the photos of 9/11, Osama, Escobar, and drug deals and quickly draw the conclusion that the DEA wants them to reach: “Drugs and terrorism go together. Please keep going with the 30-year war on drugs and the perpetual war on terrorism to protect us from both the drug dealers and the terrorists.” It will never occur to some people that it is the U.S. government’s own policies — the drug war and an interventionist foreign policy — that have engendered both the drug lords and the terrorist blowback against the United States.

As people fall for the obviously deceptive propaganda, the DEA bureaucrats will cheer because they’ll get to keep their budgets, jobs, and salaries as the drug war continues. The drug lords will cheer as well, for the same reason.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

(Columbus, Ohio) - Today, in an historic ruling, the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously held that the City of Norwood could not use eminent domain to take Carl and Joy Gamble’s home of 35 years, as well as the rental home of Joe Horney and tutoring center owned by Matthew Burton and Sanae Ichikawa Burton, for private development—specifically, a complex of chain stores, condominiums and office space planned by millionaire developer Jeffrey Anderson and his Rookwood Partners.

Joe Horney, a Norwood home owner and small businessman who had fought the taking of his property, said, “It was long road to get to this point, but it was worth it. What really sits well with me is that this is good thing for every homeowner and small business owner in Ohio.” Mr. Horney added, “I want to thank the Hamilton County Libertarian Party and the Libertarian Party of Ohio, both of which have stood with us since the beginning of this battle.”

“Only the Libertarian Party and the libertarian lawyers at the Institute for Justice are working to defend these residents and homeowners nationwide,” notes LPO Secretary Robert Butler. “It’s been a long, hard fight, but we’re very pleased to see the Ohio Supreme Court reject last year’s infamous Kelo decision.”

In a unanimous and lengthy decision, the Court laid out a series of important legal opinions. The Ohio Supreme Court explicitly rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous Kelo decision of June 2005, in which that Court held that local governments can take property from one person and transfer it to another because the new owner might produce more taxes or more jobs than the current one—so-called “economic development.” Second, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that state courts must apply “heightened scrutiny” to uses of eminent domain, especially when the property is being taken for use by another private party; according to the Court, lower Ohio courts should not simply rubber-stamp decisions by local government to take property. Next, the Court held that statutes authorizing the taking of property cannot be vague. The “deteriorating” standard used by Norwood “is a standardless standard,” and the Court rejected it. Finally, the Court struck down Ohio’s statute that allowed property to be taken even before an appeals court ruled that the taking was legal.

“This decision is a complete and total victory for Carl and Joy Gamble, Joe Horney, the Burtons and every home and business owner in the State of Ohio,” said Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Dana Berliner, who argued the case before the Ohio Supreme Court. “The Court stopped the abuse of eminent domain by Norwood and told Ohio courts that it is their job to enforce the Constitution and make sure that eminent domain really is for public use. Ohio has a terrible history of its cities abusing eminent domain for private development, and that abuse would have increased exponentially if the Court had ruled in favor of Norwood.”

“This decision will set an example for the entire country,” explained Scott Bullock, an IJ senior attorney. “Other states will look to Ohio’s well-reasoned opinion in setting their own constitutional standards. The decision also will affect future legislation in Ohio. The Court has just told the Legislature that it cannot use the kinds of vague and standardless definitions that are so common under current Ohio law. Today’s decision starts the reform of Ohio’s terrible eminent domain laws, but it is up to the Legislature to complete the task.”

“Our home is ours again!” exclaimed Joy Gamble. “The Ohio Supreme Court has stopped this piracy. Now all Ohioans are safe from the scourge of eminent domain for private profit.”

“The Ohio Supreme Court finally made us Americans again,” Carl Gamble added.

“We haven’t had the heart or the will to see our home of more than 35 years since the City and the developer forced us out and fenced it off, but I’m sure we’ll be taking a ride back up there today. This is just terrific!”

Joy continued, “Our state Supreme Court did what the U.S. Supreme Court did not do; it protected our home. The Ohio Supreme Court protected small property owners from the overpowering and overbearing city governments and the greedy developers.”

Joy added, “We stuck this fight out, but this victory would not have been possible without the Institute for Justice. We can’t thank them enough for winning us back our home and our rights.”

For the time being, Carl and Joy will remain in their newly rented apartment in Kentucky, on which they have a lease for the next six months. Joy concluded, “We’re just going to let this decision settle in. But finally, our nightmare is over.”

“The Gambles deserved to win today and to get back what’s rightfully theirs—their home,” said Bert Gall, staff attorney at the Institute for Justice. “They’ve won this battle not just for themselves, but for every single person who owns a home or business in Ohio. They and all our clients are true American heroes.”

“Almost one year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s universally despised Kelo decision, the battle between ordinary Americans and the abusers of eminent domain—tax-hungry officials and land-hungry developers—continues,” said Chip Mellor, president and general counsel of the Institute. “Today’s decision by the Court marks an historic victory for home and business owners across the country. But this fight has to continue. The Institute for Justice and our Castle Coalition are dedicated to making sure that owners throughout the country are protected from eminent abuse.”

The title to Mr. Horney’s home had been held by the developer, Rookwood Partners, pending the outcome of today’s Supreme Court decision. Mr. Horney stated that it was his understanding that the title would be returned to him immediately.

Asked what his next step would be, he replied: “Go home to my house.”

The Kelo case has touched off a revolution not only in state supreme courts, like Ohio’s, but in state legislatures throughout the country. Thus far, 30 state legislatures have passed laws giving greater protections for home and small business owners.

The Libertarian Party of Ohio and Institute for Justice contributed to this story.

– Sheldon Richman, “Where Is the Constitution?” July 28, 2006

“…man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”

– Ronald Reagan

We’ve all heard the words democracy and freedom used countless times, especially in the context of our invasion of Iraq. They are used interchangeably in modern political discourse, yet their true meanings are very different.

George Orwell wrote about “meaningless words” that are endlessly repeated in the political arena. Words like “freedom,” “democracy,” and “justice,” Orwell explained, have been abused so long that their original meanings have been eviscerated. In Orwell’s view, political words were “Often used in a consciously dishonest way.” Without precise meanings behind words, politicians and elites can obscure reality and condition people to reflexively associate certain words with positive or negative perceptions. In other words, unpleasant facts can be hidden behind purposely meaningless language. As a result, Americans have been conditioned to accept the word “democracy” as a synonym for freedom, and thus to believe that democracy is unquestionably good.

The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this, as evidenced not only by our republican constitutional system, but also by their writings in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere. James Madison cautioned that under a democratic government, “There is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” John Adams argued that democracies merely grant revocable rights to citizens depending on the whims of the masses, while a republic exists to secure and protect pre-existing rights. Yet how many Americans know that the word “democracy” is found neither in the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence, our very founding documents?

A truly democratic election in Iraq, without U.S. interference and U.S. puppet candidates, almost certainly would result in the creation of a Shiite theocracy. Shiite majority rule in Iraq might well mean the complete political, economic, and social subjugation of the minority Kurd and Sunni Arab populations. Such an outcome would be democratic, but would it be free? Would the Kurds and Sunnis consider themselves free? The administration talks about democracy in Iraq, but is it prepared to accept a democratically-elected Iraqi government no matter what its attitude toward the U.S. occupation? Hardly. For all our talk about freedom and democracy, the truth is we have no idea whether Iraqis will be free in the future. They’re certainly not free while a foreign army occupies their country. The real test is not whether Iraq adopts a democratic, pro-western government, but rather whether ordinary Iraqis can lead their personal, religious, social, and business lives without interference from government.

Simply put, freedom is the absence of government coercion. Our Founding Fathers understood this, and created the least coercive government in the history of the world. The Constitution established a very limited, decentralized government to provide national defense and little else. States, not the federal government, were charged with protecting individuals against criminal force and fraud. For the first time, a government was created solely to protect the rights, liberties, and property of its citizens. Any government coercion beyond that necessary to secure those rights was forbidden, both through the Bill of Rights and the doctrine of strictly enumerated powers. This reflected the founders’ belief that democratic government could be as tyrannical as any King.

Few Americans understand that all government action is inherently coercive. If nothing else, government action requires taxes. If taxes were freely paid, they wouldn’t be called taxes, they’d be called donations. If we intend to use the word freedom in an honest way, we should have the simple integrity to give it real meaning: Freedom is living without government coercion. So when a politician talks about freedom for this group or that, ask yourself whether he is advocating more government action or less.

The political left equates freedom with liberation from material wants, always via a large and benevolent government that exists to create equality on earth. To modern liberals, men are free only when the laws of economics and scarcity are suspended, the landlord is rebuffed, the doctor presents no bill, and groceries are given away. But philosopher Ayn Rand (and many others before her) demolished this argument by explaining how such “freedom” for some is possible only when government takes freedoms away from others. In other words, government claims on the lives and property of those who are expected to provide housing, medical care, food, etc. for others are coercive– and thus incompatible with freedom. “Liberalism,” which once stood for civil, political, and economic liberties, has become a synonym for omnipotent coercive government.

The political right equates freedom with national greatness brought about through military strength. Like the left, modern conservatives favor an all-powerful central state– but for militarism, corporatism, and faith-based welfarism. Unlike the Taft-Goldwater conservatives of yesteryear, today’s Republicans are eager to expand government spending, increase the federal police apparatus, and intervene militarily around the world. The last tenuous links between conservatives and support for smaller government have been severed. “Conservatism,” which once meant respect for tradition and distrust of active government, has transformed into big-government utopian grandiosity.

Orwell certainly was right about the use of meaningless words in politics. If we hope to remain free, we must cut through the fog and attach concrete meanings to the words politicians use to deceive us. We must reassert that America is a republic, not a democracy, and remind ourselves that the Constitution places limits on government that no majority can overrule. We must resist any use of the word “freedom” to describe state action. We must reject the current meaningless designations of “liberals” and “conservatives,” in favor of an accurate term for both: statists.

Every politician on earth claims to support freedom. The problem is so few of them understand the simple meaning of the word.

Congressman Ron Paul, a Republican, represents the 14th Congressional District of Texas, which encompasses the Gulf Coast region south and west of Houston.

Members of Pennsylvania’s third political parties — you Constitutionalists, you Greens, you Libertarians, you independents of all stripes — it appears the state has another name for you: Ballot clutter.

In a proceeding Monday in which third-party candidates are fighting for fairness in Pennsylvania’s balloting process, attorney Howard Hopkirk of the state attorney general’s office argued that current signature requirements are needed to keep the ballot streamlined and avoid voter confusion.

“The primary reason … is to prevent ballot clutter.”

If you are not a Republican or a Democrat, you are clutter. And, as clutter, you must work far harder and spend far more — with far fewer people and far less in the way of resources — just to put a name on the ballot to represent your voice.

The voices of Republicans and Democrats are easily heard in this state. In fact, many have chosen not to continue the uphill struggle of a third-party fight and instead joined one of the two behemoths to try to gain at least some attention for their views.

These third parties need 2 percent support of a statewide race in order to retain their official minor-party status for the next election cycle. It’s made that much harder by slanted requirements for gathering signatures in support of a candidacy that tilt the playing field toward the two big parties to all-but-perpendicular.

Eric Wolfe, a local Green Party member who recently announced his run for the House seat occupied by Mauree Gingrich, noted in a recent letter that third parties now require up to 33 times as many signatures as the two major parties just to get a place at the table. It’s his view that the third parties may not survive as officially recognized because of these wildly skewed requirements, and we agree.

He offered a couple of significant bits of irony in his letter: If Pennsylvania’s ballot-access laws were applied to Utah, the Democratic Party would cease to be a political party there; if they were put into effect in Massachusetts, the Republican Party would not qualify as a party.

We believe in free and open elections. We believe in the right of candidates to present their platforms for judgment at the ballot box. We believe that the right to make this presentation ought not to make a two-party battle a predestination. There are other views; there are other platforms; there are other candidates, and they deserve the right to be heard.

Of the 8 million or so registered voters in Pennsylvania, more than 7 million are aligned with one of the two major parties. But that leaves something less than a million — but still a significant number — without a political voice that cleaves close to their own personal beliefs, and a disenfranchisement of that level cannot be viewed in any way as fair.

In everything that we do as Americans — and as American consumers — we are offered a multiplicity of choices. We are offered menus and palettes of finely differentiated shades. So, why, in making our most essential choice, the choice of whom we choose to represent our views in government, are we provided with such limited options?

We are hoping that the court sees its way clear to provide greater ballot accessibility to those with alternative views of our politics. As we saw in May, Pennsylvania voters will react and seek to make changes when properly galvanized. Nothing says it can’t happen again.

A little clutter might be good for us.

“The freedoms won by Americans in 1776 were lost in the revolution of 1913,” wrote Frank Chodorov. Indeed, a man’s home used to be his castle. The income tax, however, gave the government the keys to every door and the sole right to change the locks.

Today the American people are no longer the master and the government has ceased to be the servant. How could this be? The Revolution fought in the name of the inherent natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness promised to enthrone the gains of individualism. Instead, federal taxation bribes the States and individuals to serve the interests of ever-greater submission to the centralized will.

How did tax slavery come to the land of the free?

1812

The first proposal to impose an income tax on America occurred during the War of 1812. After two years of war, the federal government had accumulated a then-staggering $100 million of debt. To fund the war against Britain, the government doubled the rates of its major source of revenue, customs duties on imports, which obstructed trade and ended up yielding less revenue than the previous lower rates. At the height of the war, excise taxes were imposed on goods and commodities, and housing, slaves and land were taxed. After the war ended in 1816, these taxes were repealed and instead a high tariff was passed to retire the accumulated war debt. Thankfully, the notion of an income tax was defeated.

However, the malevolent spirit of the income tax reappeared as a measure to fund the Union armies in the war to prevent the secession of the Confederacy. The war was expensive, costing on average $1,750,000 a day.[1] Struggling to meet this expenditure, the Republican Congress borrowed heavily, doubled tariff rates (the Morrill Tariff initially provoked the Deep South to secede), sold off public lands, imposed a maze of licensing fees, increased old excise tax rates and created new excise taxes. But none of this was enough.

1861

In July 1861, the Congress passed a 3% tax on all net income above $600 a year (about $10,000 today). However, no revenue was ever raised because a second tax passed before the first was due (on June 30, 1862). The war’s demand on resources made the earlier tax ineffective, and the sale of bonds could not keep up with the expenditures of the administration and the armies. In March, the Congress passed an income tax of 3% on annual incomes of $600 to $10,000 and 5% on incomes from $10,000 to $50,000 and threw in a small inheritance tax too. Lincoln signed the bill on July 1, 1862 to take effect a month later. The Union debt then stood at $505 million.[2] This tax also included the first appearance of withholding and was applied to federal salaries and on interest and dividends.[3]

In 1863, Congress then passed a special 5% tax on incomes above $600 to pay for an army recruitment program that would pay men $2 per recruit and pay recruit’s their first month’s pay in advance.[4]

In mid-1864, the rates were raised again. The 3% tax on incomes above $600 was increased to 5%, a new 7.5% rate was introduced on incomes over $5,000, and the old rate of 5% on incomes above $10,000 was raised to 10%. The tax on interest and dividends was also raised from 3% to 5%.

And for the first time, with the changes, Americans now had to swear to the veracity of their tax returns, and government assessors could now challenge a return. The penalty for not filing a tax return was likewise doubled to 10%.[5]

At first, the income tax raised comparatively little revenue in relation to the war’s demand for it. Harvesting only $2.7 million in 1862–1863, by the next year, the tax pulled in $20.2 million. And believing that many large-income earners were eluding the taxman, Congress raised the rate on incomes over $5,000 to 10% and gave the assessors the power to estimate income and increased the penalties for noncompliance, from fines of 25% to double that for filing fraudulent returns. By 1866, 30% of federal revenues derived from the income tax totaling $73 million, and derived primarily from just three states, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

In a move to increase compliance and the veracity of returns, the government even made tax returns available to the press. This practice was outlawed in 1870.[6]

The Confederacy also experimented with a progressive income tax, eventually imposing a tax in kind that further destroyed the already ruptured and blockaded economy of the South.[7]

1865

After the war ended, the income tax continued on to pay the government’s gigantic debt, but resistance was building. In 1867, progressing rates were replaced with a flat tax of 5% on all incomes above $1000 a year. However, the penalty for failure to file was raised to 50% and the payment date was moved from June 30 to April 30.[8]

This income tax expired in 1870 and was replaced with a 2.5% tax on incomes above $2,000. Finally, when that law expired in 1872, the United States was again without an income tax.

In the post-war years, a booming economy produced tariff surpluses for decades, but this didn’t deter many attempts to reintroduce an income tax, with members of Congress introducing sixty-eight bills to do so between 1874 and 1894.

1894

Amid the panic of 1893, an amendment was passed establishing a 2% tax on all incomes above $4,000 a year (about $50,000 today), but exempted the salaries of state and local officials, federal judges, and the president.

Democratic Senator David Hill of New York lamented, “It may be impracticable that our distinctively American experiment of individual freedom should go on.”[9]

President Cleveland opposed the income tax, but let it become law without his signature, believing it to be unconstitutional. In 1895, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against the income tax, saying that its provisions amounted to a direct tax, which was prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.[10]

Article I, Section 8 and 9 declares that direct taxes must be apportioned amongst the states according to the census. The Sixteenth Amendment was designed to get around this problem.

1895–1909

Aside from an attempt to float an income tax to pay for the Spanish-American war, the income tax largely disappeared as a major issue. Nonetheless, the Democratic Party, turning its back on its Jeffersonian heritage, endorsed a constitutional income tax amendment in their party platforms of 1896 and 1908.[11]

In 1908 Theodore Roosevelt endorsed both an income tax and an inheritance tax, becoming the first President of the United States to openly propose that the political power of government be used to redistribute wealth.

Meanwhile, factions within the Congress cobbled together a compromise amendment and in 1909, President Taft, known to be favorable to an income tax, if not necessarily an amendment, stated that although ratification may be difficult, he had “become convinced that a great majority of the people of this country are in favor of vesting the National Government with power to levy an income tax.”[12]

That same year, the income tax amendment passed overwhelmingly in the Congress and was sent off to the states. The last state ratified the amendment on February 13, 1913. The Springfield Republican reported “The Sixteenth Amendment owes its existence mainly to the West and South, where individual incomes of $5,000 or over are comparatively few.”[13]

1913

Richard E. Byrd, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, predicted, “a hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man’s business. . . . Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of Federal officials, spies and detectives will descend upon the state. . . .”[14] Pandora had opened the box.

The presidential election of 1912 was contested between three advocates of an income tax. The winner, Woodrow Wilson, after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, called a special session of Congress in April 1913, which proceeded to pass an income tax of 1% on incomes above $3,000 and applied surcharges between 2% and 7% on income from $20,000 to $500,000. A few years later the Supreme Court kissed and blessed progressivity.

The income tax returned as the product of an unholy combine between statist intellectuals with visions of state-sponsored utopias, envious demagogues and the desire by established, wealthy interests to prevent any competition to their place and to offload business costs to an expanding regulatory welfare state.[15]

At first the revenue raised by the new income tax was disappointing: only $28 million in 1914. But then it accelerated. $41 million the next year, when the top rate was 7%, and nearly $68 million in 1916, when it was raised to 15%.[16] Eventually more than $1 billion would be pulled in by the income tax during the whole of World War I, when the rates were raised to 67% in 1917 and 77% in 1918, and make the hated tax the permanent feature it has become today.[17]

After the war, the top rate would fall to 73%. In the 1920’s it fell to a low of 24% in 1929 but never again got as low as the pre-war rate of 7%. What would Americans do for a 7% rate today, one wonders? Hoover and the Republicans raised the rates to 25% in 1930, then to 63% in 1932. Under the corporate statism of the New Deal, rates leaped to 79% in 1936, 81% in 1940, finally exhausting itself at 94% in 1944–1945.

The lowest rates showed the same appetite, advancing from a 1% rate on incomes below $20,000 in 1915. In 1917, it became 2% up to $2,000, then 6% up to $4,000. By 1941, the lowest rate was 10% on incomes below $2,000. In 1945, this had jumped to 23%. Today it is 10% on annual income up to $7,000; 15% on income below $28,000. The top 10% of all income earners pay 60% of all tax revenue. And the top half pay over 95% of all revenue raised by the federal income tax.[18] The average American now works twenty years for the government simply to pay his taxes.[19]

In 1943, the government began withholding taxes on the advice of Milton Friedman.[20] After the war ended, this method of stealth taxation (and tax increases) continued.

Not until 1964 were the top rates lowered, down to 77%. In 1982, the top rate was lowered to 50% and by the late eighties the rate had been lowered to 28%.[21] But rates were raised again to 31% under George H.W. Bush, and again in 1993 to 39.6% under Clinton. George W. Bush apparently holds as an unshakeable principle that no American should be taxed more than a third of his income by the federal government. John Kerry, should he become president, appears likely to suggest the rates be raised back to the Clinton level.

The income tax lived up to its nature during World War II, devouring American wealth and liberties like a swarm of locusts, where it became the nearly universal tax we know today. In 1940, fewer than fifteen million tax returns were filed. Just ten years later in 1950, the number would be fifty-three million. In 1939 the income tax raised $1 billion. 16 years later it would raise $19 billion.[22] The state had found its most fertile harvests—middle class and working-class taxpayers. As Chief Justice John Marshall remarked, truly “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.”

Adjusting for inflation, in the 81 years between the enactment of the income tax in 1913 to 1994, government spending increased 13,592%![23]

The great critic of the income tax, Frank Chodorov wrote “Whichever way you turn this amendment, you come up with the fact that it gives the government a prior lien on all the property produced by its subjects.”[24] The United States government “unashamedly proclaims the doctrine of collectivized wealth. . . . That which it does not take is a concession.”[25]

It was with great honesty that Frank Chodorov lamented, “America is no longer the America of the Declaration of Independence.”[26]

Adam Young is a freelance Austro-libertarian writer and reviewer and lives in Canada. Send him MAIL, and see his Mises.org Articles Archive. Comment on this article on the blog

[1] Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the Civil War, by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel (Open Court, 1996), p. 222.

[2] The Politics and Development of the Federal Income Tax, by John F. Witte (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 69.

[3] The United States Federal Income Tax History from 1861 to 1871, by Harry Edwin Smith (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1941), pp. 54, 56.

[4] Ibid. p. 64.

[5] Ibid. p. 66.

[6] Ibid. pp. 67–68.

[7] Hummel, p. 227.

[8] Smith, pp. 74–75.

[9] “The Sixteenth Amendment: The Historical Background,” by Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr. Cato Journal 1 (Spring 1981), p. 168.

[10] Ibid. pp. 168–69.

[11] Ibid. pp. 171–72.

[12] Ibid. p. 173.

[13] Ibid. p. 178.

[14] Ibid. pp. 177–78.

[15] “The Political Economy of the Origin and Development of the Federal Income Tax, by Bennett D. Baack and Edward John Ray, in Emergence of Modern Political Economy, ed. Robert Higgs (AI Press, 1985), pp. 127–31.

[16] Ekirch, p. 182.

[17] Ekirch, p. 182.

[18] The Tax Foundation

[19] Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, by James Bovard (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995), p. 289.

[20] “Best of Both Worlds” (an interview with Milton Friedman), Reason, June 1995, p. 33.

[21] Federal Tax Policy, 5th Ed. By Joseph A. Pechman (Brookings Institution, 1967), p. 313.

[22] The Internal Revenue Service, by John C. Chrommie (Praeger Publishers, 1970), pp. 21–22.

[23] “Original Intent and the Income Tax,” by Raymond J. Keating (The Freeman, February 1996), p. 71.

[24] The Income Tax: Root of All Evil, by Frank Chodorov (Devin-Adair, 1954), p. 12.

[25] One Is a Crowd, by Frank Chodorov (Devin-Adair, 1952), p. 154.

[26] The Income Tax: Root of All Evil, by Frank Chodorov (Devin-Adair, 1954), pp. 6, 8.