Celebrate the Declaration of Independence?

Oscar B. Johannsen

[Reprinted from The Gargoyle, May 1975]

Next year we are to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But why? What have we to celebrate?

According to the Declaration, "Life" liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and unalienable rights endowed by our Creator and it is to "secure these Rights Governments are instituted among Men".

But does our government secure these rights? Does it secure "Life" when it has the power under the 16th Amendment to levy and collect taxes on incomes from whatever sources derived?" There is no qualification on how much income it can tax. It can tax away our incomes 100%. It is only because of the goodness of heart of the Congress that we are allowed to keep some of our own hard earned income. Since Congress can take away 100% of our income it has the Right to end our lives rather than to maintain them.

How does Congress secure "Liberty when each boy at the age of 18 must report to the Selective Service to be registered so he can be conscripted whenever Congress in its infinite wisdom so decrees? A man's body is his own -- a gift of the Almighty to him. No institution, no government has the Right to tell a man what to do with his body. Conscription is a denial of the right of a man to his own life.

How does Congress secure the "Pursuit of Happiness"? Not only has Congress levied taxes of almost every description upon us taking away so much of our income that taxes constitute the greatest part of one's income -- even more than food -- but it has told us how much wages we can pay those we wish to hire, what and how many hours of work we may perform, what professions we may enter, and what we may produce. How does it aid us in our pursuit of happiness when it takes away so much of the income we might use for the things which give us joy and hampers us with a multitude of restrictions telling us what we may do and what we may not do?

As one studies the growth of the gargantuan government which now watches over us from the womb to the tomb one is reminded of the Louis XVI government before the French Revolution. It had established so many rules and regulations making it almost impossible to trade with different parts of the country without paying innumerable tariffs and had created a class society wherein the aristocracy lived in wanton luxury while the mass of the people wallowed in poverty.

A new aristocracy has arisen in America. It is the politicians and bureaucrats who now number almost a million in the Federal Government and about 11% million in State and local governments. Their privileges extend all the way from such trivial ones as parking in no parking zones and tax-paid junkets at home and abroad to mild sentences to be served in country-like jails or pardons for crimes committed.

While the mass of the people do not wallow in the poverty such as prevailed in pre-French Revolution France an increasing number are becoming poorer and poorer. The government has made money and banking for all practical purposes a state monopoly and in the process has so inflated the currency that our money is becoming worthless. In the process, most of the middle class is being wiped out.

1776 was a great year in the history of America for the people then did celebrate the birth of freedom here. In 1976 will the people be celebrating the rebirth of freedom here or more likely will they be celebrating its death pangs?