Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual “show me the law” tax protesters → Ed & Elaine Brown

In my ongoing project of excerpting those sections of Thoreau’s journals in which he discusses politics, economics, civil disobedience and the like, I have just reached the point at which he gave the speech that he published as Slavery in Massachusetts.

He used his journal to write rough drafts of much of the rhetoric he would use for that speech and essay, starting with his reaction to the reenslavement of Thomas Sims in (see Thoreau’s undated journal entries in , and his entry for ), and then with the similar case of Anthony Burns in (see Thoreau’s journal entries for , , , , , and )

While reading these entries, I was reminded of poor, deluded, Constitutionalist tax protester Ed Brown, who is waving a Waco wick at that big matchbook in Washington and getting ready to go out in a blaze of gunfire because, though the judge disagreed, Brown knows there’s no law on the books that requires him to pay taxes. “Show me the law and I’ll pay the taxes”:

The judges and lawyers, all men of expediency, consider not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right, but whether it is what they call constitutional. They try the merits of the case by a very low and incompetent standard. Pray, is virtue constitutional, or vice? Is equity constitutional, or iniquity? It is as impertinent, in important moral and vital questions like this, to ask whether a law is constitutional or not, as to ask whether it is profitable or not. They persist in being the servants of man, and the worst of men, rather than the servants of God. Sir, the question is not whether you or your grandfather, seventy years ago, entered into an agreement to serve the devil, and that service is not accordingly now due; but whether you will not now, for once and last, serve God, — in spite of your own past recreancy or that of your ancestors, — and obey that eternal and only just Constitution which he, and not any Jefferson or Adams, has written in your being. Is the Constitution a thing to live by? or die by? No, as long as we are alive we forget it, and when we die we have done with it. At most it is only to swear by. While they are hurrying off Christ to the cross, the ruler decides that he cannot constitutionally interfere to save him.

(I used to just laugh at the weird legal theories of the Constitutionalist tax protesters, but now that I’ve heard the sort of creative Constitution reading practiced by none other than the United States Attorney General, I think the Ed Browns of America are probably as qualified as the next guy to interpret the Highest Law in the Land.)

Constitutionalist tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown have been convicted of tax evasion and were recently sentenced to, among other things, five years in prison. Neither was present at the sentencing hearing; instead they “have holed up in their hilltop home in Plainfield, which has a watchtower, concrete walls and the ability to run on wind and solar power. The couple also say they have stockpiled food and other supplies.”

They’ve also said that they will not surrender, and they have a number of armed supporters who have vowed to help them defend their home against government assault.

So the networks are busy photoshopping new text over their Waco Massacre graphics.

It’s especially sad, because the Browns and their friends are planning to martyr themselves over the silliest claptrap the tax protester movement has to offer — stuff that’s so fatuous and inconsistent that I can’t imagine that the Browns themselves really believe it:

Ed and Elaine Brown have agreed, from the beginning, to pay all taxes that they owe. They have sworn in court that if the government simply shows them the law that requires them to pay an “Income Tax,” they would pay all owed taxes with penalties and interest. The government has yet to show the law. The government simply says, “you must pay, because we say so,” and “if you don’t pay, we will throw you in jail and take all that you own.”

(“I told the robber that I’d be happy to hand over my wallet if he’d only show me the gun. But he refused to show me the gun, he just shot me and took my wallet. Now, is that fair?”)

It’s true that Ed and Elaine Brown don’t owe the government a dime, and they shouldn’t be threatened and attacked for failing to pay up. But this isn’t because “there is no law.” Indeed there is a law, and many other laws besides, and if the Browns believe that government laws tell them what their obligations are, then they should have paid up all along.

People have always disagreed about what The Law means, and guess what — The Law comes fully-equipped with a built-in method for resolving such disagreements. The Browns have a disagreement, the built-in method says they’re full of it, that’s that. That’s how The Law works. Thanks for playing. If you don’t like it, stop pretending you love The Law.

If someone walks up to me and says “you’re out” and points at the dugout, I’m under no obligation to slink away in the direction he indicates. But if he’s the umpire and I don’t do what he says, I may be well within my rights but I’m not playing baseball.

Once you’ve decided that The Law is legitimate, you’ve given up the game, even if you challenge the legitimacy of some specific law. If you think you’re the one who gets to decide what is or isn’t The Law, judges be damned, then you don’t really believe in The Law at all and you’d be better off just admitting it.

All this pointless nitpickery over bullshit like whether the 16th Amendment was properly ratified by the appropriate number of states with identical capitalizations and so forth — it just insults the intelligence. Do the Browns really expect me to believe that they have decided to hole up in their fortress for a great last stand because of some dispute over whether Ohio was properly admitted to the Union in ?

Such arguments are embarrassing and absurd, and yet people I respect are falling for them. And some people may get themselves killed over them, and too many people are encouraging them to do so.

Some links from here and there:

  • The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is holding a national conference and committee meeting in Oregon. This meeting will include a special focus on cooperation between the war tax resistance movement and climate/environmental activism.
  • Nathan Goodman spoke on his research into how U.S. military spending makes Americans poorer and less free.

    He put in a kind word for war tax resisters: “If a cellphone, burger, or cup of coffee isn’t worth the price to me, I can choose not to buy it. Were you ever given an ‘unsubscribe’ option from American Empire? If I want to stop paying to subsidize the brutal Saudi war in Yemen for instance I have very few options. There is of course a noble tradition of war tax resistance in the United States, with Henry David Thoreau refusing to pay poll taxes that he believed funded the Mexican-American War and Noam Chomsky and others resisting taxes during the Vietnam War, but tax resisters face repression, they risk incarceration, they risk garnishing of their wages, they risk having their property seized, and even moving out of the United States isn’t enough to avoid paying for American Empire: When you criticize U.S. foreign policy you might get told ‘hey if you don’t like it you can leave’ — well even if you leave you still are seen as owing taxes to the U.S. government unless you go through a costly process of renouncing your citizenship. And that’s ignoring that there are also funds gained through inflation, through the printing of money, that’s a tax on everyone who holds U.S. dollars…”
  • I noticed a campaign calling itself “Tax Resistance” suddenly appear on-line. It has appropriated photos from the U.S. war tax resistance movement, but it seems to be directed at potential war tax resisters in the U.K. Its Twitter account was suspended before I could even take a look at it. Its Facebook page is spare and generic. There’s no indication who’s behind it. I’ve got a suspicious eyebrow raised, but will keep my eyes on it.
  • Attacks by motorists on traffic ticket machines continue worldwide. Some recent examples:
  • If the IRS files a formal tax lien against you, expect a lot of deceptive junkmail from outfits hoping to capitalize on your plight.
  • Remember Ed & Elaine Brown? The “show me the law”-style tax protesters who became causes célèbres in constitutionalist/sovereign-citizen circles? They were arrested after a long siege of their New Hampshire home about a decade ago and given lengthy — essentially life — prison terms. But one of the major charges against them was based on a law that was declared to be unconstitutionally vague in an unrelated Supreme Court case, and so now the Browns will be resentenced and may soon be released as a result.
  • The government of Ontario is protesting the Canadian federal government’s carbon taxes by mandating that gas stations put stickers on the pumps that point out how carbon taxes are rising and contributing to the price of gasoline. Ontario is also spending millions of dollars on legal battles opposing the tax.