Sons of Liberty

I have been watching "Sons of Liberty" on the "history" channel the past two days (finale is tonight) and the more I watch, the more I inspect and reflect on the grievances, hardships, and general indecent treatment of colonists by agents of the crown, the more I draw parallels to today's U.S. government with all of its taxes and levies and fines and appropriated executive authority.

If our ancestors - well, MY ANCESTORS - were here today, witnessing the ever-increasing scope of government influence and interference both at home and abroad, to the point where small business, any business not intimately connected with/to a favorable public official, office, or agency, was paying up to half of its revenue in taxes alone (we have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world), they would be meeting right now in Philadelphia preparing a document which would, for the sake of all free men, submit and surrender their personal fortunes and freedoms to dissolve or abjure their status as "citizens of the crown".

Read the Declaration of Independence.  Dissect the accompanying list of grievances and tell me there are not similarities - or worse - among the burdens of the common man under the yoke of today's "progressive" oppression.

This country has survived long beyond the limits of any reasonable expectation nearly solely on the merit of the dogged determination of insiders, charlatans, petty tyrants, and the might of the world's most well-equipped and funded military power.  So, too, was it in 1776 with England.  The most powerful navy ever assembled.  The most well-trained and equipped army of the Napoleonic era.  One of the furthest-reaching and omnipresent empires in the history of the world.

Defeated by a bunch of rabble-rousers with hand-me-down muskets, a few brilliant minds and, ultimately, the support of the French Armada.

The British Empire was, at the time, one of the most "free" empires in all of history.  As a constitutional monarchy there were rules and laws and certain rights which were enjoyed by all - so long as the crown was held sacrosanct and paid due tribute.  Taxes on goods were not nearly what we pay on them today, and yet those taxes were enough to incite riots, boycotts, bloodshed.  A free people should not be paying tribute to any king, elected or otherwise.  There is no middle ground - taxes are slavery. To pay a tax on property already owned, over and over again (real estate, personal property, etc) is fiendish and immoral.  To support such a scheme, lest it be strictly due to compulsion, is also immoral.

Yes, I said it.  If you agree that paying taxes is your "civil duty" then you are a reprobate.  "Render unto Caesar", if you will, is the only reason to defer to the will of the state over the will of God.  We are captive by the laws of man, but only so long as we are willing to suffer them.  The state knows that I am no good to my family dead or in jail.  I also know this.  So I oblige their theft of my personal wealth as a consequence of loving and living in my home Virginia.

But, as per H.L. Mencken, every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.  My boiling point has long-since passed, yet my instinct for self-preservation has prohibited me from doing anything brash or foolish.  It took several YEARS before the colonials could be convinced to enough men that the reign of King George should end, at least on this continent.  They did not want to unseat him, merely to be free of him and his ilk.

And that is my only desire for Virginia.  I wish to be free of Washington D.C.  I wish to be availed of the despotism which demands apportionment of MY EARNINGS to wage war on my neighbors for smoking a plant or against foreign nationals half a world away whose only "crime" is defending themselves from american "exceptionalism" (read: colonial conquest).

I make no secret of my feelings for the elected officials, their pettiness, their insincerity.  The U.S. military is but a tool of foreign policy, and the increasingly-militarized municipal police departments are but the same tool deployed at home.  Whenever you decide that you have had enough - seek me out.  Bring 500,000 of your closest friends and let's change the world.