Send this article to a friend:

December
11
2019

Sin Taxes & Other Orwellian Methods of Compliance
That Feed the Government’s Greed
John W. Whitehead

“Taxman,” the only song written by George Harrison to open one of the Beatles’ albums (it featured on the band’s 1966 Revolver album), is a snarling, biting, angry commentary on government greed and how little control “we the taxpayers” have over our lives and our money.

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.
Don’t ask me what I want it for
If you don’t want to pay some more
‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman.

When the Beatles finally started earning enough money from their music to place them in the top tax bracket, they found the British government only-too-eager to levy a supertax on them of more than 90%.

Here in America, things aren’t much better.

More than two centuries after our ancestors went to war over their abused property rights, we’re once again being subjected to taxation without any real representation, all the while the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little concern for the plight of its citizens.

Because the government’s voracious appetite for money, power and domination has grown out of control, its agents have devised other means of funding its excesses and adding to its largesse through taxes disguised as fines, taxes disguised as fees, and taxes disguised as tolls, speeding tickets and penalties. And then you have all of those high-handed, outrageously manipulative government programs sold to the public as a means of forcing compliance and discouraging unhealthy behavior by way of taxes, fines, fees and programs for the “better” good.

Surveillance cameras, government agents listening in on your phone calls, reading your emails and text messages and monitoring your spending, mandatory health care, sugary soda bans, anti-bullying laws, zero tolerance policies, political correctness: these are all outward signs of a government—i.e., a societal elite—that believes it knows what is best for you and can do a better job of managing your life than you can.

This is tyranny disguised as “the better good.”

Indeed, this is the tyranny of the Nanny State: marketed as benevolence, enforced with armed police, and inflicted on all those who do not belong to the elite ruling class that gets to call the shots.

So-called “sin taxes” have become a particularly popular technique used by the Nanny State to supposedly discourage the populace from engaging in activities that don’t align with the government’s priorities (consuming sugary drinks, smoking, drinking, etc.).

Personally, I don’t think the government really cares how its citizens live or die: they just want more of the taxpayers’ money, and they figure they can rake it in by using sin taxes to appeal to that self-righteous segment of every society that sees nothing wrong with imposing their belief systems on the rest of the populace.

Examples abound.

For instance, a growing number of cities and states (Washington DC, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle, among others) have adopted or considered imposing taxes on sugary drinks, as much as a dollar more for a two-liter bottle of soda, supposedly in the hopes of forcing lower-income communities that struggle with obesity and diabetes to make healthier dietary choices by making the drinks more expensive.

The faulty logic behind these sin taxes seems to be that if you make it cost-prohibitive for poor people to pursue unhealthy lifestyle choices, they’ll stop doing it.

Except it doesn’t really work out that way.

Study after study shows that while sales of sugary drinks decreased sharply in cities with a soda tax, sales figures spiked at stores located outside the city. In other words, people just shopped elsewhere.

You won’t convince former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg of this, however. Bloomberg, a 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful, believes the government needs even greater tax powers in order to force Americans—especially poor people—to make smarter lifestyle choices. “When we raise taxes on the poor, it’s good because then the poor will live longer because they can’t afford as many things that kill them,” stated Bloomberg.

Folks, this right here is everything that is wrong with the power-hungry jackals that aspire to run the government today: by hook or by crook, they’re working hard to frogmarch the citizenry into complying with their dictates, because they believe that only they know what’s best for you.

Unfortunately, this is what happens when you empower the government and its various agencies, agents and corporate partners to act in loco parentis for an entire nation.

Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.

Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow.

Therein lies the problem: we have suspended our moral consciences in favor of the police state.

The choice before us is clear, and it is a moral choice. It is the choice between tyranny and freedom, dictatorship and autonomy, peaceful slavery and dangerous freedom, and manufactured pipedreams of what America used to be versus the gritty reality of what she is today.

Most of all, perhaps, the choice before us is that of being a child or a parent, of obeying blindly, never questioning, and marching in lockstep with the police state or growing up, challenging injustice, standing up to tyranny, and owning up to our responsibilities as citizens, no matter how painful, risky or uncomfortable.

As author Erich Fromm warned in his book On Disobedience, “At this point in history, the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the government’s claims on your life, your movements, your property and your money, you’re not free.

Personally, I’d rather die a free man having lived according to my own dictates (within the bounds of reasonable laws) than live as a slave chained up in a government prison.

John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. Whitehead's concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him, in 1982, to establish The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties and human rights organization whose international headquarters are located in Charlottesville, Virginia. Whitehead serves as the Institute’s president and spokesperson, in addition to writing a weekly commentary that is posted on The Rutherford Institute’s website (www.rutherford.org), as well being distributed to several hundred newspapers, and hosting a national public service radio campaign. Whitehead's aggressive, pioneering approach to civil liberties issues has earned him numerous accolades, including the Hungarian Medal of Freedom.

Whitehead has been the subject of numerous newspaper, magazine and television profiles, ranging from Gentleman's Quarterly to CBS' 60 Minutes. Articles by Whitehead have been printed in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and USA Today, among others.

Whitehead gained international renown as a result of his role as co-counsel in Paula Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton. Whitehead continues to speak out in defense of a woman's right to be free from sexual harassment and frequently comments on a variety of legal issues in the national media. He has been interviewed by the following national and international media (partial list): Crossfire, O’Reilly Factor, CNN Headline News, Larry King Live, Nightline, Dateline, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, CBS This Morning, This Week with Sam and Cokie, Rivera Live, Burden of Proof, Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, FOX News Sunday, Hardball, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, National Public Radio, BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio, British Sky "Tonight" and "Sunday," TF1 (French TV) and Greek national television.

The author of numerous books on a variety of legal and social issues, as well as pamphlets and brochures providing legal information to the general public, Whitehead has also written numerous magazine and journal articles. Whitehead's most recent books include Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. In addition, he wrote and directed the documentary video series Grasping for the Wind, as well as its companion book, which focus on key cultural events of the 20th Century. The series received two Silver World Medals at the New York Film and Video Festival and is now available on DVD.

Whitehead has filed numerous amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also been co-counsel in several landmark Supreme Court cases as well. His law reviews have been published in Emory Law Journal, Pepperdine Law Review, Harvard Journal on Legislation, Washington and Lee Law Review, Cumberland Law Review, Tulsa Law Journal and the Temple University Civil Rights Law Review.

Born in 1946 in Tennessee, John W. Whitehead earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Arkansas in 1969 and a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1974. He served as an officer in the United States Army from 1969 to 1971.

www.rutherford.org