March 20, 2004

Posted at Liberty Post, Strike The Root, Free-Market.net, Breaking All the Rules, Rational Review,
Trumpet America, The Christian Libertarian Yahoo Group, Rational Review, The Stanley Scoop
Ender's Review, Brian Drake's page, Keep and Bear Arms and All American Gold.

Recently, I was reminded of the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry. It got my wheels turning about how silly this whole anti-telemarketing crusade really is.

Telemarketers are nuisances, but they can be dealt with very easily. All you have to do is hang up the phone. If you want to tell them to #*@% off, it is your prerogative and no one can punish you for doing so. Governments are different.

I write this with less than 30 days to go before April 15. When will the American people become as exercised about tax collectors as they are about telemarketers? Harry Browne, the Libertarian candidate for president in 1996 and 2000 is fond of asking the following question: “Would you give up your favorite federal program if you never again had to pay income tax?”

I did not put my name on the do-not-call list for just this reason. It is one more totally frivolous thing Uncle Sam does with my money. Even though enforcement of penalties against telemarketers – and internet spammers – costs a microscopic fraction of the federal budget, these microscopic fractions add up to over $2 trillion every year. And they take a serious chunk – about half -- of my income. The nuisance imposed by telemarketers is nothing compared to that imposed by the IRS.

Likewise with the “invasion of privacy” imposed by telemarketers. When someone calls your house at dinnertime all they are is a voice on the other end of a line. They cannot spy on you or in any way pry into your personal or financial affairs.

Governments, funded by taxes, impose the most egregious invasions of our privacy. Every year, as April 15 approaches, Uncle Sam, and his underlings in statehouses across the land, forces us to lay bare every last detail of our financial and personal affairs. We can tell telemarketers to @#$% off. However, we cannot write across all the various forms and schedules that the tax pigs tell us to fill out: “It is none of your ^&*%#{@ business.” Uncle Sam’s surveillance of his subjects – we are no longer citizens – has only grown worse under the Patriot Act. No telemarketer has such power.

Considering that the nuisances and invasions of privacy imposed by the tax pigs dwarf those imposed by telemarketers, I propose the creation of a National Do Not Tax (DNT) Registry. Just as telemarketers face stiff penalties for calling people who have placed their names on the DNC list, tax collectors would face even stiffer penalties for trying to collect money from those people who have signed up for the DNT list.

I stopped supporting the socialist political establishment in this country in the spring of 1992. In other words, I stopped buying what they were selling. I stopped buying:

• The world’s most lavish welfare state.
• The federal education establishment and, indeed, state education altogether.
• Social Security and Medicare.
• The oppressive taxes that pay for all of it.
• The Federal Reserve.
• The United Nations, NAFTA, GATT and all other entities that work to undermine our sovereignty.
• Federal intrusion into the medical arena.
• The War on Drugs.
• Gun Control.
• Waco, Ruby Ridge and the Elian Raid.
• The mindless harassment of people like Rick Stanley, Roy Moore, Martha Stewart and Michael New.
• Rogue federal judges and a Congress that does nothing to restrain them.
• The harassment of Christians by the government’s schools and its rogue judges.
• The regulatory tourniquet that squeezes American businesses to the point where many of them simply move much of their operations offshore.
• The world’s highest incarceration rate.
• Foreign aid.
• Our military presence in over 100 countries.
• The 13-plus year war with Iraq.
• Any federal activity not authorized in the 18 clauses and 431 words of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Now that I have announced that I do not want to buy what Uncle Sam is selling, I further demand that he quit trying to sell it to me. Moreover, I demand that he stop invading my privacy in the process.

I will place my name on the National DNT Registry. Those of us on the list will use all constitutional tools at our disposal – the two strongest being fully-informed jurors and the “well-regulated Militia” of Second Amendment fame – to keep the boot of the IRS off our necks. We will assert our right to tell the IRS to *^$@ off!

But how would we fund a small defensive Navy and those constitutionally authorized duties of the FEDGOV? Through constitutionally authorized methods, of course. These would include a few insignificant revenue tariffs – to pay for those very few and defined authorized functions of government – as opposed to protective tariffs – that protect politically privileged industries.

Other than that, we would be left alone to live our own lives, fend for ourselves and solve our own problems.

The Founders gave the old steel tip to a “tyrant” who took only three percent of their income. Today, federal, state and local governments take 50 percent of our income. Bring back King George III and 47 percent of my money! He wasn’t the nicest guy in town, but – in addition to not raping us on taxes – he did not force us to attend and subsidize his state indoctrination centers (read public schools) or tell us what we could or could not put in our bodies.

If someone was down and out, we could pass the hat at church or in the neighborhood, and everyone would have far more money to contribute. (Even after paying our voluntary tithes, we would still have 37 percent additional disposable income.) If political events and market conditions caused the price of gasoline to spike, it would be a lot easier for consumers to absorb. And if someone called you trying to sell me something you did not want, you could just slam the phone down and not whine and weep and wail for your government to pass a program to stop such calls. (Hopefully, you could once again distinguish between real and imagined invasions of privacy.)

It would be far easier for you to feed yourself and your family, house yourself and your family, clothe yourself and your family, insure yourself and your family, educate yourself and your family and save for your retirement.

Furthermore, there would be far more peace and quiet in your life and in society in general.

Here is the rub: finding congressmen and senators to sponsor my proposal for the National DNT Registry and bring it to a vote.

Not gonna happen? In that case, let us just find 56 or so real patriots to sign on to a new Declaration of Independence. In 1776, 56 real patriots pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor for their support of a declaration – far more eloquent than anything I will ever write – telling tyrants to #$%^ off! America needs more real men like this. And it needs them now.

Related article: Telemarketers or Tax Collectors: Who Annoys You More?

Freely Speaking: Essays by Doug Newman

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