By
Ron Ewart
August 27, 2014
NewsWithViews.com
"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions." ~ James Madison
The other night we
were watching the 1960-war movie "The Mountain Road"
with James Stewart. It took place in China during World War II when the
Japanese were advancing throughout the mainland of China. It was 
Stewart's
job to lead a small group of demolition experts to blow up an airport
the U. S. was abandoning and then blow up bridges, ammunition dumps and
sections of the mountain road to blunt the Japanese advancement. This
would allow thousands of refugees to escape into the mountains and give
time for the Chinese to build opposition forces.
During the trek over the mountains, Stewart and his men encountered tens of thousands of desperate, starving and fleeing Chinese refugees. They also encountered Chinese Army deserters who were hungry and dangerous. In a moment of compassion one of Stewart's men took some cans of fruit to a crowd of refugees who then promptly trampled him to death to get to the food.
Towards the end of the movie one of the team's trucks was stolen and the driver and passenger killed by Chinese Army deserters. Stewart in a fit of rage, vowed revenge and returned to where the deserters were drinking in a local pub, celebrating their prize. He used all of the firepower and explosives he had in the team's possessions to wipe out the deserters. In the process he killed a bunch of innocent Chinese peasants.
After Stewart regained his senses, he realized he had overreacted and felt a sense of remorse. He tried to explain to the widow that had accompanied the team on the mission, that he did it because he had the "power" and the power he had was all consuming. He was unable to resist its hold on him.
And so it is with all men (and women) with power over people and the weapons to enforce that power. The temptation to use that power and those weapons without restraint becomes overwhelming and inevitable.
When Hitler was declared Chancellor of Germany in 1933, it was decided that he had to have a national police force that would ferret out treachery and treason against the Third Reich. That police force, under the command of Heinrick Himmler, was called the Gestapo. The Gestapo was under no judicial review or restraint whatsoever and was free to arrest, try, imprison and execute anyone, at any time, or just make someone disappear.
Even though the Gestapo was not a large force relative to the population, it instilled so much fear into the people that every German citizen thought there was a Gestapo agent behind every telephone pole. The Gestapo was ruthless in their tactics. Their power was absolute and fully sanctioned by Hitler and Himmler. The people were so intimidated they would turn in anyone in the hopes of getting on the good side of the Gestapo whether the person they turned in had done anything or not. The Gestapo encouraged this behavior and sometimes rewarded the snitchers.
In contrast today, Americans have become just like Germans during World War II, turning in their neighbor to the local authorities if they think their neighbor has done something wrong, or if they had a gripe with their neighbor. Every week we get one or more calls or e-mails from landowners who tell the story of their neighbor using alleged infractions of land use ordinances to turn them into the city or county authorities ….. anonymous of course. The more laws government passes the more citizens will turn into petty snitches for the government ….. just like the Germans did with the Gestapo.
Which brings us to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The power of the IRS to take money from you in the form of taxes has become almost absolute. There is still judicial review of their actions but judicial review is handled essentially by IRS officers, IRS attorneys and IRS courts ….. a stacked deck at best.
The arrogance the IRS and its officers have shown to congressional review, reflects the power the IRS believes it has over the people and even over the Congress. The mindset of its officers and employees, like Lois Lerner and several of its commissioners, demonstrate that it is a power unto itself, answerable to no one. Delays, obfuscation and deletion or hiding of evidence while under congressional scrutiny happen with regularity and impunity. The questions regarding their partiality to a particular political party and their ties to the current president grow by the day. Their power to destroy citizens by just picking up the phone and subjecting an otherwise lawful taxpayer to harassment and intimidation by multiple federal government agencies, apparently knows no bounds. And now the IRS controls your health care.
The Department of Justice, under the command of Henreich Holder, shows more interest in a local shooting of a black man, than he does to the growing and dangerous power of the IRS. Heir Holder will assign 40 FBI agents to scour the neighborhoods of Ferguson and St. Louis to find some black man that will unequivocally state that he saw the police officer shoot Michael Brown in cold blood who had his hands up in an act of surrender. But Heir Holder will only assign one heavy duty Obama donor to investigate the IRS. An alleged racial incident in the heartland has a greater priority in Heir Holder's mind than reining in an out-of-control, rogue government agency.
But let's examine that thought for a moment. The U. S. government is so much in debt for the promises it has made to the American people and can't pay without borrowing, that they scramble to collect every possible dime in taxes by any and all means. It serves the American government to have an IRS that behaves like Hitler's Gestapo because fear is the greatest incentive to compliance. Why do you suppose that the Congress has never repealed the IRS and the ridiculously complicated, draconian and complex tax code? The Congress needs that tax code to keep the people in chains by controlling their behavior using the processes of social engineering, created by socialists. Congress wants the people to live in fear of the IRS.
Given these conditions, how long will it be before the IRS is no longer under judicial review or congressional oversight? Politicians, desperate to keep the money flowing and to maintain their power, will begin to overlook the excesses of the IRS and in fact will and have overlooked many excesses by federal agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security that has created a police state, the Environmental Protection Agency that has all but repealed the 5th Amendment and the rights of landowners and most other federal agencies that have become militant and militarized.
How long will it be before the entire Bill of Individual Rights contained in the first 10 Amendments to the U. S. Constitution will succumb to growing federal power, just as individual rights did under Hitler? How long will it be before "no man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions?"
The federal government, using the public treasury as a weapon against the people, has bought off virtually every segment of the population and has bought off the states with money from the public treasury in return for implementing federal policy.
All federal policy that becomes law by legislation, or bureaucratic rule making is designed to limit freedom. Think about it. Obama Care was all about limiting freedom. Environmental law is all about limiting freedom. Every government agency promulgates tens of thousands of rules and regulations every year that limit freedom. An American can't move sideways without bumping into a federal, state, or local law that limits their freedom. An entrepreneur can't open a new business or bring a new product to market without having to jump through local, state, or federal hoops, or complying with zillions of laws that only high-cost attorneys can interpret. The cost to jump through those hoops can be in the millions of dollars. Just think what our economy could do without all of these government obstacles in the way.
One of the greatest limiters of freedom is the IRS. Billions of man hours are spent by Americans every year trying to comply with a tax code only twelve insane monkeys could have pounded out on typewriters ….. or, created by a bunch of government brainwashed attorneys who listened to Obama's constitutional lectures at Harvard University. Only educated idiots, bent on enslaving the citizens en masse, could have put together a tax code that is undecipherable by a normal, reasonable and prudent person. This doesn't even take into account the great con game played out by the government and the IRS on the people over the last 70 to 80 years on who really owes income taxes.
Stories of abuse, harassment and intimidation perpetrated on taxpayers by the IRS, is the stuff of legends and hundreds of books and articles. Assets are stolen, lives are ruined and some are even killed or commit suicide that have the misfortune to find themselves under the gun of the IRS. Americans are subjected to a cold, heartless, ruthless and faceless enemy. They receive unsigned letters, notices, demands and liens from nameless agents. Many of those letters, notices and liens are outright mistakes made by the IRS, to the detriment of the taxpayer. A taxpayer can't face their accuser because their accuser has no name and no face.
Attempts by Congress to make the IRS more "user friendly" are a joke. In the 1998 legislation to do just that, the taxpayer was supposed to be innocent until proven guilty by the IRS. Just try to explain that to the next IRS agent that comes calling, or sends you an unsigned letter, or notice of lien. Oh, and a hard drive crash is not a defense when confronting a demand from the IRS, nor is the consuming of your tax records by a goat. Only the IRS is afforded that prerogative.
Millions of Americans have been slowly learning over the last several decades that they have been hoodwinked by a government that has shoved the IRS and the complicated income tax code down the people's collective throats. The IRS has us all locked in the unrelenting steel jaws of a vice grip, with Congressional approval. Even we place ourselves at considerable risk for just writing this article. The confusion and complexity of the IRS Code and its unequal enforcement and abuse will continue to be a significant problem for all Americans until the matter is settled once and for all. The only way to settle the matter is to repeal it and replace it with a fully constitutionally apportioned tax.
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As many or our readers know, we have had our own difficulties with the IRS. In response to those difficulties we have just released a new video entitled "The IRS - Akin to Hitler's Gestapo" that is available at the following link.
We must all remember that knowledge is power. If you are having difficulties with the IRS, or want to understand more about it, we encourage you to visit our newly expanded IRS tax information website, where you will find a wealth of information, some of which will be useful in your fight against the IRS and some of which you probably didn't want to know.
[NOTE: The following article represents the opinion of the author and is not necessarily shared by the owners, employees, representatives, or agents of the publisher.]
� 2014 Ron Ewart — All Rights Reserved
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Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property issues and author of his weekly column, "In Defense of Rural America", is the President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, (NARLO) (http://www.narlo.org) a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State, an advocate and consultant for urban and rural landowners. He can be reached for comment at info@narlo.org.
Website: www.narlo.org
E-Mail: info@narlo.org
