America the Unfree
by Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts27.html
The Heritage Foundation and Wall
Street Journal’s tenth annual Index of Economic Freedom pulls the wool over
our eyes. The deception is unintentional and arises from a fatal flaw in
the index.The index delivers the comforting conclusion that the US is the
10th most free country, far ahead of 155th ranked North Korea. However,
the index ignores the simple truth that people who do not own the product
of their labor are not free. People subject to an income tax do not own
the product of their labor.
Our Founding Fathers understood this.
Indeed, historically the very definition of freedom has been self-ownership.
Serfs and slaves are not free, because they do not own their labor.
Any American who thinks he
owns his labor can test the proposition by refusing to pay his income
tax. He will quickly discover that he is not a free person.
The Heritage index is ahistorical.
It is blind to the enormous loss of freedom in the 20th century, especially
in the US and the UK. It takes as its starting point the re-enserfment
of populations and predicates a "freedom" index on unfree labor.
This extraordinary failing reduces
a valuable study to a propaganda device.
Compare an American
taxpayer's situation today with that of a 19th century American slave.
Not all slaves worked on cotton
plantations. Some with marketable skills were leased to businesses or released
to labor markets, where they worked for money wages. Just like the wages
of today’s taxpayer, a portion of the slave’s money wages was withheld.
In those days the private owner, not the government, received the withheld
portion of the slave’s wages.
Slaves in that situation were
as free as today’s American taxpayer to choose their housing from the
available stock, purchase their food and clothing, and entertain themselves.
In fact, they were freer than
today’s American taxpayer. By hard work and thrift, they could save
enough to purchase their freedom.
No American today can purchase
his freedom from the IRS.
Slaves could also run away. Today,
Americans who run away are pursued to the far ends of the earth. Indeed,
the IRS can assert its ownership rights for years after an American gives
up his citizenship and becomes a citizen of a different country. The IRS
need only claim that the former American gave up his citizenship for tax
reasons.
I challenge Heritage and the Wall
Street Journal to initiate a broader index of freedom, one that not only
includes self-ownership, but also the Bill of Rights that defines our civil
liberties and the 14th Amendment that insists on equality before the law.
Such an index would reveal that the
US is a stunningly unfree country. The lowest federal tax rate in combination
with the Social Security and Medicare tax confers serf status upon lower
income groups. The top tax rate, federal and state, converts successful
Americans into government’s slaves.
The protective principles in law
that ensure our civil liberties – no crime without intent, no bills
of attainder, no retroactive law, the attorney-client privilege, no self-incrimination
– have been eroded beyond recognition. Wars against the Mafia, drug
dealers, child abusers, and terrorists – accused whose convictions are thought
necessary at all costs – have eviscerated the Bill of Rights. Today not
even multi-billionaires can fight off prosecutorial frame-ups.
Americans believe that they are
free until they encounter the "justice" system, at which time
they learn that they are as helpless as medieval serfs.
The "civil rights revolution"
destroyed equality before the law. Today rights are race- and
gender-based. We have resurrected the status-based rights of feudalism.
The new privileges belong to "preferred minorities" rather than
noble families.
Neoconservative
delusion that America has a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose American
values on the world prevents a realistic look at the deplorable state of
freedom in America today. It is a paradox that a country that has abandoned
freedom and re-enserfed its population sees itself as role model for the
world.
January 28, 2004
Dr. Roberts [PCRoberts@postmark.net]
is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research
Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow
at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall
Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He
is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Copyright © 2004 Creators
Syndicate
