Love It or Leave It: The End of Government as the Problem by Abscondo - HTML preview

PLEASE NOTE: This is an HTML preview only and some elements such as links or page numbers may be incorrect.
Download the book in PDF, ePub, Kindle for a complete version.

THE TOTAL FREEDOM ACT

 

At the beginning of the book, I asked a fundamental question: If you were offered the chance at total freedom from taxes and total freedom from government in your life, would you take it?

I am proposing exactly this.  I am proposing that Congress and the President pass what I will call the Total Freedom Act.  Let me introduce the proposed piece of legislation:

·         The Total Freedom Act will restore the possibility of complete freedom by offering every American the chance to completely opt-out from paying any taxes.

·         In return for the right to live in complete freedom and pay no taxes, citizens who exercise their right to live under the Total Freedom Act cannot benefit at all from the government or from any government program.

·         Those living under the protection of the Total Freedom Act will be independent from and untouched by the laws of the United States.  The only exception to this is when it comes to those laws that are protecting tax-paying citizens (your right to exercise freedom cannot harm tax-paying citizens).

·         Those who have opted to live under the Total Freedom Act but who wish to return to their former status as a tax-paying citizen can only do so by back-paying any taxes that would have been owed during the time spent living under the Act.

The case will be made that the enactment of the Total Freedom Act is something that should be fought for by each and every American.  I will also explain why Washington should want us to have this option.  As you recall from the previous chapter; the truly unique, original aspect of the American Dream – the origin of the idea – is the belief in true freedom.  Back in the early days of America, when people around the world could no longer tolerate the oppressive country in which they lived, when it seemed as though they had little opportunity, when they desired to be free, they came to America.  They weren’t guaranteed success on this quest for true freedom; rather, they were promised only that they had a chance at freedom.

Even after these early settlers had established themselves in the new world, even if they didn’t like how things were going in New England, for example, they were free to go out West, buy some land (or be given some land by the government), and were free to brave the wild frontier in search of that better life.  I’m not talking about these settlers in an abstract sense.  These were real people, with real feelings, with real hopes, and with real dreams.  Sometimes they won big, sometimes they failed badly and fell hard.  Other times, they ended up on some quiet, small farm somewhere in Wisconsin, where they had unremarkable children who went on to live unremarkable lives taking over the family farm.  Like I did.  Just kidding.  But they did all of this on their own terms.  That’s the point.  They were free people exercising free will.  They did not feel like subjects to a monarchy.  They did not feel oppressed by big government or by big business.  They were free to live and work.  They were free to fulfill their dreams or die trying.  They were true Americans!

American settlers were also free to go even further west, to California in search of gold perhaps.  In each of the towns they passed through, there may or may not have been a sheriff.  There may or may not have been law and order.  These brave men may or may not have gotten themselves into a gun-fight outside of a saloon to resolve a dispute.  They were free to drink hard and even to visit a whorehouse if that is what they wanted to do.  Nobody could stop them.  They weren’t perfect people.  This wasn’t at all about family values, as the Disney films would have us believe.  This was about freedom!  This was the American Dream.  Remember?

We can recognize this same longing for freedom in the voices of people shouting that government is the problem.  You want to be free from government?  You want to live according to free-market principles?  You want to stop paying taxes?  You want to be completely free?  Perhaps you aren’t sure whether you would opt to live in the kind of freedom I’m describing, but maybe you’d at least want to know that there’s an option like this available to you if you want it.  So come along with me as I take our case right to the government.