Copyright 1954 by Frank Chodorov. Material in this book must not be reprinted in any form without written permission from the publisher. For information address The Devin-Adair Company, 23 East 26th Street, New York 10, N. Y. Manufactured in the United States of America.

To the Memory of

ALBERT J. NOCK

Foreword

THIS WAS, to be sure, “the home of the free and the land of the brave.” Americans were free simply because the government was too weak to intervene in the private affairs of the people—it did not have the money to do so—and they were brave because a free people is always venturesome. The obligation of freedom is a willingness to stand on your own feet.

Argument

Tradition has a way of hanging on even after it is, for all practical purposes, dead. We in this country still use individualistic terms—as, for instance, the rights of man—when, as a matter of fact, we think and behave in the framework of collectivistic doctrine. We support and advocate such practices as farm-support prices, social security, government housing, socialized medicine, conscription, and all sorts of ideas that stem from the thesis that man has no rights except those given him by government.

CHAPTER I

Solomon’s Yoke

IT IS TOLD—1 Kings, Chapter 12—that the people of Israel petitioned their new king, Rehoboam, son of Solomon, to relieve them of the “yoke” his father had suffered them to bear. The “yoke,” we learn from the story, was the cost of maintaining the political establishment; it was an income tax.

CHAPTER II

Politically Speaking, What Is “Evil”?

THE SUBTITLE of this book is “Root of All Evil.”

CHAPTER III

Yours Is Not Your Own

THERE ARE taxes and taxes. All are alike in two respects: they are compulsory and they are part of production. “Taxation, says the Encyclopedia Britannica, is “that part of the revenue of the State which is obtained by compulsory dues and charges upon its subjects.”

CHAPTER IV

How It Came Upon Us

THE CONSTITUTION of 1789 barred the income tax. The Fathers could not have put it in, even if they had a mind to, and there is no evidence that they had. A century later, when Americans were flirting with this invasion of property rights, legal minds tried to twist the language of the Constitution to their support. Whatever crumbs of comfort they got out of word juggling, the fact is that the Americans of 1789 would have none of this income tax. They were not that kind of people.

CHAPTER V

The Revolution of 1913

THE CIVIL WAR income-tax law, or laws, underwent several changes; but each change specified the same terminal date, 1870. Political promises being what they are, the last law was continued until 1872. This adherence to a terminal date is worth noting; it is a left-handed admission that the taxation of incomes was generally held to be obnoxious, perhaps unconstitutional, and was tolerated only as a temporary necessity. It was a war measure.

CHAPTER VI

Soak the Poor

“FROM ANY source derived” includes wages. To be sure, the original Populists, and the aping Democrats and Republicans, to say nothing of the conscious Socialists, little thought that their income-tax gadget would ever be used to “soak the poor.” It was an instrument, they thought, that could lend itself to no other purpose than to expropriate the rich in favor of the poor. How the poor would benefit from the expropriation, they did not explain; their intense hatred of the rich conveniently filled this vacuum in their argument.

CHAPTER VII

Corruption and Corruption

“The imposition of the [income] tax will corrupt the people. It will bring in its train the spy and the informer. It will necessitate a swarm of officials with inquisitorial powers. It will be a step toward centralization…. It breaks another canon of taxation in that it is expensive in its collection and cannot be fairly imposed;… and, finally, it is contrary to the traditions and principles of republican government.”—REPRESENTATIVE ROBERT ADAMS, January 26, 1894.