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Brian arrived in Washington DC late at night. He checked into a hotel room after midnight. He set his suitcase down and fell onto the bed, delirious from his long trip. That evening he slept like a baby.
Upon waking, Brian organized his belongings and headed off to the Library of Congress for a reconnaissance tour. He did not plan on getting any work done that day; he still had jet lag and was disoriented by the vast library. So he just wandered about, looking around, asking questions, and absorbing everything he could.
Sitting at a table in the library, Brian was reviewing a list of materials to study that would fill in his gaps of knowledge. He thought these materials could provide him with a greater understanding of the world. With this new understanding, he hoped to solve the puzzle of why people lose their hope and happiness upon growing older.
Two books on the list stood out in his mind, ones he really wanted to read. The first book was titled World Dynamics by Bill Warner. The second book was titled Love of Freedom by Christie Bridges. There were many others on his list, but these two were his personal favorites, as he read articles written by these authors and really liked their style and ideas. He got on a computer and searched the library’s database for these and other books. When he saw they were available, he asked a librarian how he could get them.
After spending the day at the library, Brian stopped for dinner on the way back to his hotel. He went into a fairly nice restaurant, where he was going to have dinner alone. The waiter seated him at a table and walked away. While reviewing the menu, a waitress approached him and said, "Can I start you off with a drink?"
"Water, please," was Brian’s reply.
"Are you ready to order now?" she asked politely.
"Sure. I’d like the prime rib dinner with mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables," Brian said.
The waitress smiled and walked away.
A few minutes later she returned with a dish of steaming food. She set the dish in front of Brian and asked if he needed anything else. He told her to come back in a little while.
Never having been to Washington DC before, Brian wanted to ask the waitress about this district. When she returned, he asked her where the major shopping centers, universities, parks, theatres, and concert halls were. She said that she did not know because she was not from around the Washington DC area. She was only there temporarily, as she was visiting a friend. He understood and said it was nice to meet her. Then he left for his hotel room to sleep.
Brian spent several hours a day reading in the library. He also would write notes in his journal, relating what he had just learned to everything else he knew that was relevant. He consciously tried to integrate as much of his knowledge as possible to what he was learning. He would concentrate on a new idea he was learning and look for the logical relations to other relevant things he knew. This is how Brian files new knowledge in his subconscious. And that enables him to retrieve knowledge from his subconscious quickly, efficiently, and powerfully—by logically linking new knowledge to his existing knowledge.
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One day the strangest thing happened to Brian. He was sitting at a table in the Library of Congress when a piece of paper fell off his table onto the floor. Just at that time, a librarian happened to be walking by. She stopped in front of the paper, bent down, and picked it up. As she began to put it on Brian’s table, she saw something on it from the corner of her eye.
"Have you read anything by Bill Warner?" the librarian asked.
"Yes…oh, you saw him on my list, huh?" Brian responded.
"Oh I’d recognize his name anywhere. He’s my favorite author. I saw his name on your paper and wondered if you like his work," she said.
"I think his writings are great," replied Brian.
"Really? Well, I’ve read everything he has ever published. I can’t get enough of his style, ideas, and unique insights about freedom. And with his vast knowledge encompassing world politics, I feel as if I know everything about the world when I read his works," the librarian said.
"I know what you mean," commented Brian.
"Have you read Bill Warner’s latest article, the one he published in this week’s Freedom Now magazine? You know, the one about the illegality of taxation," she said.
"No," Brian replied.
"Oh, it is very controversial, but I love it. We’ve got all these politicians and lawmakers around here constantly using taxation as a means to control productive citizens. But if Mr. Warner’s work becomes accepted by the mainstream of public thought, he will dramatically cut those politicians’ and lawmakers’ power, leaving them only with the job of protecting citizens from force and fraud rather than controlling their every move. This article is so good that I want you to read it. I just read it earlier today; I’ll go get it for you," the librarian said enthusiastically.
Before Brian could stop her she was gone. Then, in a few minutes she returned with a smile and a magazine. It was Freedom Now magazine.
"Here, check this out. If you like Bill Warner’s work, you’ll want to read this," the librarian said as she put the magazine on the table in front of Brian with it open to the page of Bill Warner’s article.
He quickly glanced at the article, noticing that it was a couple pages long. Since he really liked the author, he decided to read it right then. Brian read the following:
Taxes are Illegal
Taxes are illegal? How could that be? People have been paying taxes for more than four thousand years. What is going on here?
The sole basis for determining if an action is legal or illegal comes from answering the following question: Does the action violate individual or property rights? If an action violates any individual's self or property, then it is illegal. If an action does not violate any individual's self or property, then it is legal. It follows that only actions that consist of initiatory force, fraud, or coercion are illegal.
Now look at taxation. Everybody knows that tax collection is backed by physical force. In order for the government to collect taxes from its citizenry, the government has to ultimately rely on weapons and prisons. Why? Taxation inherently violates individual rights. It always violates an individual's earned property.
Simply put, if a man does not pay his taxes, a gun will guide him into prison, period. He is deemed guilty of a criminal offense and punished accordingly. No matter the type of tax—income, corporate, capital gains, sales, property, luxury, or inheritance tax—all tax collection ultimately requires physical force. But the prime evil in any society is the initiation of physical force and its corollary: coercive threats. The only morally and legally justifiable use of force is in self-defense against those who violate individual or property rights.
So, why have taxes? The most common answer is to fund governments: city, state, and federal governments. How, then, can citizens eliminate taxes and still receive government protection: bodily, property, and contractual protection?
The answer, ironically, is simple. But before answering that question, one needs to understand the proper function of government. The sole function of government is to protect the individual-and-property rights of each citizen. Government does this through three agencies:
1. The military—to protect citizens from foreign aggressors
2. Local police forces—to protect citizens from assault and theft
3. Objective-law courts—to protect citizens from breach of contract
This implies that government does not get involved in transportation, education, housing, food, drugs, medicine, health care, the environment, business, communications, or any other area. Government fulfills its purpose by providing bodily, property, and contractual protection only.
What about taxes? Eliminate them—and nearly all the bureaucracies of the federal government. The goal would be to have a:
* Legislative Branch that derives and formulates objective laws only
* Executive Branch that executes the law—but lacks the power to direct society
* Judicial Branch that interprets & applies the law impartially—free of political biases
* Department of Defense that protects national borders using advanced technology
* And local police forces that protect—but never attack—innocent citizens
Yet if taxes were eliminated, how would the government procure operating capital? Through the same mechanism businesses procure operating capital: the free market. Government would be reduced to its proper function of protecting individual rights. And it would be a for-profit organization, somewhat like a retail company or computer manufacturer.
That is the goal. However, to go from current governmental trends to a proper government requires a couple stages. For example, income, corporate, and property taxes can be phased out in favor of a consumption tax, such as a national sales tax. This would end the life-destroying power of the IRS. Then the sales tax can be replaced by user fees, which would be voluntarily paid by citizens who want government protection. Like when a man goes to the store, if he wants a product or service—in this case bodily & property protection—he pays for it.
With citizens paying market rates for protective services, government would transpose from an out-of-control, tax-funded juggernaut to a super-efficient organization that delivers steadily increasing values to society like Wal-Mart or IBM.
Brian read the article carefully to make sure he understood all of Mr. Warner’s points. Then he reread the article. He was stunned.
"My God!" Brian said out loud, "How obvious! Why didn’t I think of this? Of course taxation is illegal—not because of any constitutional violations, but because it requires the use of force and coercion to collect. That is why the Internal Revenue Service has an armed division called the Criminal Investigation Division. CID agents wield force and coercive threats against honest, hardworking Americans in order to usurp their earned income and property. The only moral and humane solution to this scourge is to have voluntary payments for government protection," said Brian as light bulbs began flashing in his head.
He got up from his chair and went over to the copy machine. He made a copy of the article and left the library—leaving the librarian standing alone.
In his hotel room, he set up his laptop computer and searched for Bill Warner. He found a telephone number and called it, reaching Mr. Warner’s secretary. Brian made an appointment to meet with Mr. Warner about his taxation article. He could not stop thinking how right this was—the goal of ending coercive taxation and all other coercive measures of government.