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Additional Titles

NOT SO SECURE SOCIALISM

 

by Brother Gregory Williams
August 1, 2010
NewsWithViews.com

The United States Supreme Court in 1937 validated Social Security as an exercise of the Constitutional taxing power of Congress for the benefit of the general fund of the United States Treasury. The Supreme Court also said that “Congress could, in its future discretion, spend that money for whatever Congress then judged to be the general welfare of the country” having “no constitutional power to earmark or segregate certain kinds of tax proceeds for certain purposes, whether the purposes be farm-price supports, foreign aid or social security payments.” [1]

At the time of its introduction of the Social Security Act to Congress and the American people “The President wanted everybody covered for every contingency in life---’cradle to the grave,’ he called it---under the social insurance[2] system… But the Government of the United States is not an insurance company and so it could be done.” [3]

While the system of Federal Social Security was “sold as if it were insurance” [4] it was not. There is a great deception or a strong delusion that social security taxes are payments of insurance premiums to obtain specified benefits at a specified time. There is no such right.

According to the Social Security Tax Act the government has been under no contractual obligation to make any return payment from the very beginning and has carried the provision that, “The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of this act is hereby reserved to the Congress.” [5]

Therefore “Congress could continue to collect the so-called social security pay roll taxes even though Congress discontinued all social security benefit payments.” [6]

This may seem a little scary for some who are or may be dependent upon such payments but that is exactly what you should expect as the national and world economies continues their descent into a domain of devastating decline, debt and disaster. To believe that you have a right to get back specified benefits because you paid into Social Security is a fallacy, if not a delusion and a false hope.

According to Dr. Clarence E. Manion, the Supreme Court held that Congress can “tax payments and earnings of employers and employees in the same way that it can tax a bottle of whiskey or a ticket to the ball game.” [7]

A man and his naturally endowed right to his labor was not originally the same as a bottle of whiskey nor a ball of twine. The idea of people every day laboring without pay for the government is as old as the pyramids. It is known by many names such as statutory labor, corvee, or tribute.[8]

Corvee’ is a French word which can mean “Gratuitous labor exacted from villages or communities, especially for repairing roads, constructing bridges, etc.”[9] In Latin it would be covata from corrogare meaning “to gather by request”. Webster says it is an “obligation on the inhabitants of a district to perform services” or “forced labor exacted by government.”

To take a man’s labor without consent[10] falls within a broad definition of slavery.[11] Neither the President nor the congress had the power to compel a free people to begin to labor without pay. They could not force the entire population into becoming tax collectors and serfs, or taskmasters and statute laborers without some form of consent.[12]

The Romans had a Corvee system in their protected provinces and eventually throughout the empire to maintain public works. The Jews often opposed this because it was like the system of bondage in Egypt which God told the people never to return to in the Biblical instructions for writing a constitution.[13] Some of the citizens of Judea had appealed for the protection of the Roman Commander in chief, Pompey. There had been some exclusion of Jews from individual tribute because of their respect for religious freedom recognized in Roman law. But the Pharisees brought in their own system under the guise of religious obligations.

Like all these system that begin as a “request” they end up as a “forced obligation” but not without some form of consent of the people along the way.

Managing social welfare by exercising authority over the people has often been a part of governments from Babylon to Rome and they all failed or betrayed their public members. No matter what dedicated promises are made by a government at its beginning the deal is often altered before their demise.

Pure republics have always cared for the social welfare of its inhabitants through freewill offerings, but when the people neglect their responsibility in a free society they often decline into states of socialism that begin with promises of benevolent benefaction and end in decadence, decay, and despotism.

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All governments expand their power or influence over the people in schemes with offers of gifts, gratuities, and benefits,[14] which gives government an increase of authority and requires a corresponding decrease in the individual’s right to choose. What they will contribute, to whom and for what purpose becomes the province of the government, and the “will of the People” is imposed upon the people by the benefactors chosen for the people.

Herod the Great had a grand scheme of a vast membership in a social welfare scheme called Corban.[15] You joined with a ceremony of ritual baptism after filing an application for membership with the administering “scribe.”[16] Payment of prescribed fees was required and annual accounting of what you paid or did not pay was made available to the proper authorities.

With annual contributions collected and recorded by the scribes this system of individual sacrifice to support the needy of society became popular with many people who were jealous and envious of the rich or just covetous of their neighbor’s goods. With guaranteed entitlements and forced contributions the apathy and avarice of the people flourished.

Members were given a white stone as ID[17] and Herod was able to expand his hope of a kingdom of God on earth by this religious system of social security (Corban) which provided for a statutory enforcement and collection from membership in the form of a tax.

Pilate "... used the sacred treasure of the temple, called corban (qorban), to pay for bringing water into Jerusalem by an aqueduct. A crowd came together and clamored against him..."[18] Because those funds were for their individual social welfare and the people complained. Few understood that what should have been for their welfare had brought them into bondage.

“Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap.” Psalms 69:22

Because this precept of God is so fundamental Paul repeats it.

“And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them:” Romans 11:9 [19]

Why do I say this social security system was religious? Because:

“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit[20] the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27

John the baptist offered a similar plan of social welfare but without the use of force used to collect the contributions of his people.[21] His plan was based on free will offerings like ancient Israel[22] when it was still a Republic.[23] Christ objected to the plan offered by Herod and the Pharisees[24] not only because it weakened the character of the people, and therefore society as a whole, but it also violated the precepts of God found in the Ten Commandments.

Jesus preached a system of social welfare that operated under the perfect law of liberty[25] by faith, hope and charity.[26] Christians stood fast in the liberty of Christ[27] and cared for each others through their own system of social welfare managed by the Church.[28] The Church in those days actually understood the Gospel of the Kingdom appointed by Christ and would never send their people to the governments that called themselves benefactors but exercised authority one over the other in opposition to His instructions. [29]

The early Church called people to repentance and baptism. This was not just some meaningless ritual. They would no longer covet their neighbor’s goods through the agency of Herod’s socialist government nor Rome’s free bread and extensive welfare state. They learned to care for one another in a network of love and service. [30]

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Rome and Jerusalem would soon falter and fail under the weight of their own corruption. Christians hearing the fullness of the Gospel of the Kingdom preached by John and Christ formed a new society that would survive and prosper in true faith during that decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

It is time for the Church to call for that repentance again but first it may have to do some repenting of its own.

Footnotes:

1. The Social Security Tax, by Clarence E. Manion. U.S. vs. Butler, 297 U.S. 1; Stewart Machine Company vs. Davis, 301 U.S, 548; Helvering vs.Davis, 301 U.S. 619.
2. On page 936 through page 946 of the Ways and Means hearings the originator stated that the “sold as if it were insurance” was a mistake and should not have been published as such. It was not until 1953 when the originator admitted that it is not insurance as published in 1936. To be like insurance is not being insurance.
3. Forward by Frances Perkins Sec. of Labor 1933-45, The Development of the Social Security Act, by Edwin E. Witte, ppVII
4. Edwin E. Witte before the Ways and Means hearings,1953, page 936 through page 946.
5. Social Security Act of 1935 Title XI- General Provision, Section 1104.
6. The Social Security Tax, by Clarence E. Manion.
7. Dr. Manion, formerly Dean of the Law School at Notre Dame, now practices law in South Bend, Indiana.
8. Slavery and Serfdom, “Other forms of servitude related to slavery, and sometimes indistinguishable from it, are serfdom, debt bondage, indentured service, peonage, and corvee (statute labor).” Compton’s Encyclopedia.
9. Black’s Law Dictionary 3rd p445.
10. What is mine cannot be taken away without consent.” Quod meum est sine me auferri non potest. Jenk. Cent. Cas. 251.
11. “All government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery!” Jonathon Swift.
12. “For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:” from The Declaration of Independence.
13. Deuteronomy 17:14-20
14. “The real destroyers of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.” Plutarch, 2000 years ago.
15. Mark 7:13 “Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.”
16. Scribe is from the Greek grammateus meaning “a clerk, scribe, esp.a public servant, secretary, recorder, whose office and influence differed in different states”
17. “The missionaries… with their... white stones, would come back with the same wallets full of money, in foreign currency. Once put into Jewish currency by the money-changers [porters of the temple], it would be stored in vaults ...Herod’s scheme of initiation into a new form of Judaism was immensely successful....” Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Barbara Thiering, Harper Collins: 1992
18. The Aqueduct- Josephus, War 2.175-177, Antiq 18.60-62.
19. Ex20:17, 23:32, 34:12...; Pr1:10, 23:1...; Ro13:9, Mr7:22, Mt5:34, Ja5:12, 2 Peter 2:3
20. Episkeptomai “ to look upon or after ... have care for, provide for:”
21. Matthew 11:12 “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence [biazo=to use force, to apply force, violence], and the violent [biastes] take it by force [harpazo = to seize, carry off by force].” Luke 16:16 “ The law and the prophets [were] until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man [all] presseth [biazo] into it.”
22. Ex. 35:29, 36:3, Lev. 7:16, 22:18-23, 23:38, Nu. 15:3, 29:39, Deut. 12:6, 12:17, 16:10, 23:23, 2 Chron. 31:14, 35:8, Ezra, 1:4, 3:5, 7:13-16, 8:28, Psalms 54:6, 68:9, 110:3, 119:108, Ezek. 46:12, Hosea 14:4, Amos 4:5.
23. Luke 3:11 “He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.”
24. The Corban of the Pharisees,
25, James 1:25 “But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth [therein], he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”
26, 1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity.”
27, Galatians 5:1 “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
28, “And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.”The Church government in 150 AD are described in Justin’s First Apology:
29, Luke 22:25 “And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But it shall not be so among you:” Matthew 20:25, Mark 10:42.
30, Living Network Index page,

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