“Man’s Rights”:

“Man’s Rights”: “It was the concept of individual rights that had given birth to a free society. It was with the destruction of individual rights that the destruction of freedom had to begin.” There were warnings before the establishment of the federal income tax in 1913 that it would become a major source of those individual rights being eroded away. And now that threat is becoming ever more clear. In fact, the IRS, which administers the collection of income tax and enforcement of the federal tax code, is under the spotlight for its extreme political partisanship as well as rampant misuse of taxpayers’ money in its activities. Losing any semblance of being a steward of taxpayers’ money, numerous instances of outrageous misspending by the IRS have come to the public’s attention. As well, they were found to be giving tax-exempt status to those organizations that toe the line of the current administration while denying it those organizations opposed to larger government and more centralized control from Washington. As Rand described it: “A collectivist tyranny dare not enslave a country by an outright confiscation of its values, material or moral. It has to be done by a process of internal corruption.” The scandalous behavior of the IRS is one of many examples of corruption we are finding out about on a weekly basis. We have a Presidential administration that doesn’t hesitate to use various federal departments and agencies to pursue its collectivist agenda and attack its political opponents. It has gotten so bad that overwhelmed Congressional oversight committees cannot keep up with the rampant corruption. Another aspect of this “process of internal corruption” that Rand speaks of is he growing misuse of Executive Orders by presidential administrations. In Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution it says: The Congress shall have Power to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. The president is clearly in violation of this when he uses his agencies to institute rules and regulations which carry the weight of law. Congress shall have power, not the President, in creating the laws necessary for any Department or Officer carrying out its duties. Rand warned us how dangerous it is to have an out-of-control federal government: “Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is man’s deadliest enemy.”