Government is force. And force is dangerous.

That's enough on that subject for now; more later.

As little as possible: Unnecessary use of force breaks things.

Government should exercise functions in those areas where men cannot operate well on their own and for themselves. Thus, government is useful in the creation of road systems, in defining where a road should be laid, and how it should be constructed. Government proper does not build the road, of course, but arranges for its construction. Typically, either taxes from the general population or user fees from travelers finance the construction of roads.

Government should not get in the way.

That is a simpler statement than it turns out to be in practice. Fundamentally, men have unalienable rights. Their plain existence is by natural right. Their continued, unmolested existence is also by natural right -- no one, and especially no government, has the power to limit a man's existence, until and unless he has abused some other in a manner which naturally and implicitly results in loss of rights: A voluntary choice, by having abused another's rights, to give away exactly such rights of one's own. To this end, we empower government to act on behalf of all men, to punish the abuser, to make concrete that loss of rights: So we execute the murderer, we force restitution to the robbery victim, and (in some societies) we castrate the rapist. (Quiz question: Why don't Americans do any of these any more?)

This also means that government should not intrude unnecessarily into the day-to-day lives of men. When there is genuine need to intrude, it should be to balance conflicting, multiple needs. Unnecessary intrusion is unnecessary use of force, causing things to break.

This is the beginning of trouble: Government intrudes in the belief that it knows better how to do certain things than the men whose lives are affected by what government does. This betrays a grave inconsistency: Men operating as agents of government are still just men. There is no reason to expect that men who have aspired to governmental power and force are any more intelligent, more aware, more facile in managing the lives of men, than men who have not aspired to such power. Reasonable men will disagree; but men as agents of government have the coercive force of that government behind them, and are capable of intruding in ways that men operating alone cannot. Again, intrusion is breakage, and conflict begins when government force is used inappropriately to compel men to do things they do not wish to do.

One must be wary of these men who aspire to positions of governmental power. There is something fundamentally different, and dangerous, about a man who believes that his rightful place in society is a position of authority over many others who are otherwise like himself -- as opposed to the ordinary man who merely wants to live a quiet life, raise a family, and work a career. Such aspiring men must be contained, restricted, boxed in, and reminded as a matter of routine that they are in such positions on the grace and permission of those over whom they wish to lord their position.

Government is a living thing, with needs and desires, beyond and independent of those of the individuals making it up. Particularly, it seems to me, government wants to feed and it wants to grow. The only way for a government to continue to feed more and to grow larger over a fixed territory is to tax ever more heavily, and to require ever more stringent demands on the people in how they live. To function properly as the agent of Us The People, government needs regular pruning, just as an orchard grower or vineyard keeper trims back his plants. We have lost the pruning function entirely, if we ever had it in the first place.

The proof of this in day-to-day life is left as an exercise.

It is a plain fact that men institute governments. Governments do not spring into existence spontaneously and of their own accord; men build them consciously. This is important: If I make something, then at a very important level, I own that thing. I take some raw materials which I already own, and I create something new out of them with the labor of my hands. The new thing is mine. Hence, when men make a government, men own that government.

Government does not own men.

At least, in those societies which do not recognize the divine right of kings, men own government. Men build it, and men will do with it what they wish. They will destroy it and start over again, if they find the result sufficiently unsatisfying. "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." -- Declaration of Independence

Let us address this in the context of the American governmental system:

The chain of creation was, quite explicitly, [a] the presence of men, having full natural rights, who created [b] state governments to act on their behalf for those purposes where men acting alone cannot, followed lastly by the creation of [c] the federal government, demonstrably as agents of the states, to act on the states' behalf for those purposes where individual states acting alone cannot. Thus, the military is a function of the federal power, prevented from exercise within the states, so that provision for the "common defense" is at the level of the entire Union; treaty making power is done at the border of the whole Union, not the individual states; coinage is done by Congress, so that commerce among the states has a common means of barter.

But observe well that the 10th Amendment (in particular) explicitly reserves all powers not explicitly given the federal government to the states and the people themselves. The fact that the states and the people have the power to limit the federal government is evidence of who is at the top of the chain of command. We The People head that chain, the states follow Us, and the federal government follows the states. Note who is at the bottom, as far as we have gone here.

Men have rights. Governments have powers. Powers are delegated from men. In a society lacking support for divine right of kings, it is never appropriate to claim a government's "right" to do anything -- never.

The treaty which ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, in Article 1, contains the admission by "His Brittanic Majesty" that the States are "free sovereign and independent states" and that he "relinquishes all claims" to everything about them. Thereafter, it delineates the physical borders, provides some mechanics by which to repatriate people who've found themselves on the wrong side of those borders, and several other things along the way.

So...if the treaty acknowledges (note that it did not grant) the sovereignty of the states...Who owned them?

We The People did, of course. We became the owners of the places we inhabited. This was essentially the beginning of the creation of the chain of command, and following the treaty, governments in these states were set up on the basis of constitutions. People gave their consent, not to be owned by a new government, but to create new governments subject to themselves. This is where the phrase "sovereigns without subjects" came from -- individually, everyone in the now-free states was sovereign, and delegated authority to a new government.

We are. Or, we are supposed to be.

Yick Wo vs. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370 (1886)

"Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power." [emphasis added]

Perry vs. United States, 294 U.S. 330, 353 (1935)

"In the United States, sovereignty resides in the people who act through the organs established by the Constitution. [cites omitted] The Congress as the instrumentality of sovereignty is endowed with certain powers to be exerted on behalf of the people in the manner and with the effect the Constitution ordains. The Congress cannot invoke the sovereign power of the people to override their will as thus declared." [emphasis added]

Wills vs. Michigan State Police, 105 L.Ed.2d 45 (1989)

"In ordinary construction, the law does not refer to the sovereign."

Our Constitution defines two flavors of taxation, direct and indirect. Specifically, in Constitution 1:2:3, direct taxation "by apportionment" is mentioned, and in 1:8:1, we have the definition of what are called "indirect taxes," being "duties, imposts and excises."

Apportioned direct taxes are those which are levied on the states. Note well that they are not levied on the people: "[D]irect taxes shall be apportioned among the several States..." This means that, if the federal government needs funds for some purpose, it must divvy up the collection of those funds by taxing the States in proportion to the census of each State. That is, if the federal government wants $1 billion, and if Pennsylvania contains 8% of the total population of all of the States, then Pennsylvania must cought up $80 million to the federal coffers.

Indirect taxes are those which are levied upon goods, notably. This is how we fund highways, for example, via the "indirect tax" on gasoline.

The right to own property is recognized as one of the fundamental, natural rights of human existence, the right to hold something and say, "This is mine." In the case of Redfield vs. Fisher, there is an important statement as part of the decision, that ownerhip of property is a fundamental right, that one cannot be taxed for the simple holding of property, and, especially, that one owns the labor of one's hands. When one does work for hire, one is exchanging one form of property, one's labor, for another, either currency or other materials for direct barter.

Having this fact before us, consider the recognition given it by the Treasury Department:

Gross income excludes the items of income specifically exempt by ... fundamental law free from such tax.

--Treasury Decisions under Internal Revenue Laws of the United States, Vol. 21, Article 71

The result is that the payment received in exchange for one's labor is not taxable. Nearly everyone is unaware of this. And that lack of awareness is horrifying...in myself (until recently) at least as much as in anyone else.

The federal government, and the IRS in particular, are quite aware of this. They act on the basis of coercive manipulation, not plain facts. Read the Internal Revenue Code, Title 26 of the United States Code. Try to figure out what is meant by the word "includes" when the IRC defines a term to say that it "includes" certain other things: Does it mean a limiting inclusion, that the term in question includes only and exactly the listed other things? Or is it an expansive inclusion, that the term in question includes the listed other things as well as things not listed? The ambiguity is apparently deliberate, given that in certain cases (notably, liquor taxes) the IRC uses the word "means" when it wants to define a term, and "means" is clearly a limiting definition: "A means B, C, or D" is exact, while "A includes B, C, and D" is inexact, since in the latter case you can't tell whether A may also include E, F, and G.

Further, it is a plain fact that income tax payment is voluntary:

Let me point this out now: Your income tax is 100 percent voluntary tax, and your liquor tax is 100 percent enforced tax. Now, the situation is as different as day and night.

--Internal Revenue Investigation, Mr. Dwight E. Avis, head of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division of the Bureau of Internal Revenue; Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Ways and Means, Feb. 3 thru Mar. 13, 1953 [emphasis added].

Each year American taxpayers voluntarily file their tax returns and make a special effort to pay the taxes they owe.

--1971 Form 1040 instruction booklet [emphasis added]

The mission of the Service is to encourage and achieve the highest possible degree of voluntary compliance with the tax laws and regulations ....

--Donald C. Alexander, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Federal Register, March 29, 1974, Vol. 39, No. 62, page 11572 [emphasis added].

Our tax system is based on individual self-assessment and voluntary compliance.

--Mortimer Caplin, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Internal Revenue Audit Manual, 1975 edition [emphasis added].

The IRS's primary task is to collect taxes under a voluntary compliance system.

--Jerome Kurtz, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Internal Revenue Annual Report, 1980 [emphasis added].

Other examples abound. But what the IRS does is to scare people to death, thinking that all manner of horrible things will happen if they fail to file returns and pay these taxes.

We encourage voluntary compliance by scaring the heck out of you!

--Roger M. Olsen, Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., Saturday, May 9, 1987.

But let's leave taxation behind briefly, and look again at the larger picture of governmental intrusion.

This bureaucratic infrastructure that has been inflicted upon us is horrendous. It is wrong, both legally and morally. Here's a quiz:

Albert opens a business. Albert hires Betty to work for him. In turn, and with the approval of Albert, Betty hires Charles to work for her.

Question: At what point does Charles become Albert's boss?

Answer: When Albert lets him.

We The People (A) created the governmental system of the sovereign states which make up the Union (assorted Bs). These Bs went off to create the federal government (C), because certain things were seriously inconvenient for the Bs to do individually on their own. It is objectively obvious that this was the manner and order of creation of these governmental systems.

For C to have arrived at a point where he lords his position over the rightful creators, A, is deeply offensive.

There is no reason why this sorry situation needs to continue. There is no reason why government cannot be pared back to something minimal, where it does what it must, instead of merely what it can. Refer to the Sanford Levinson quote, a ways back there, in the Good Quotations section, regarding a transition observed in law, moving from principle to will.

There are 250 million of us in this Union. It is undoubtedly true that a certain, and surely non-trivial, amount of government infrastructure is going to remain necessary. But the incredible weight and bloat under which we currently suffer is not necessary. Yes, a quarter billion is a lot of people to be asking to get along. But we can do it. We are a civilized people -- we can do this, if we are willing to do so.

That is what I am up to. I am in search of ways to assert my full, unalienable rights as a free man, to tell petty and pinheaded bureaucrats that they lack authority over me.

On the other hand, I'm rather fatalistic: Shit happens; there's no such thing as gravity, the earth sucks. So my primary emphasis in what I'm doing here is for myself, because I lack confidence that a sufficient fraction of the quarter billion of us can really get it all together sufficiently in a test of wills against government, before the matter first comes to a test of arms. I work on these issues for me, mostly alone -- and then I make available a bunch of materials such as my own source references, and the correspondence I've been sending, in the hope that others will see it, put it to use, and increase the likelihood of that fraction becoming sufficient to win the test of wills without needing to resort to the test of arms.

Two paragraphs ago, I made a statement that is indicative of a problem with which I struggle in this manner: I know I'm right, I can prove I'm right, I have court precedent to say that I'm right, I can cite government documents that agree I'm right, I can name several dozen people who've already performed the necessary steps to assert that rightness...

And I develop an attitude of something approximating haughtiness.

*sigh*

Bad, bad, bad. One must be cautious, careful, and, above all, respectful when dealing with this problem. There are several reasons for this. One, it is just as bad for me to be haughty in my position as it is for the petty bureaucrat to be haughty in his; it is a moral failing on my part to show such disrespect. Two, on a plain practical basis, the petty bureaucrat still has a lot of raw, coercive, government force behind himself, people with guns and courts and lawyers trained in this crap, and unless you play the game just so, one can find oneself badly screwed. Three, it is a mark of civilized man that he can get along with his fellows, even when he disagrees with his fellows. In fact, it is not unreasonable to say that the coercive force of government is necessary only in exactly those situations where civilized men have failed in their civility: Men disagree over their respective rights, they fight, and government steps in, armed (sometimes literally) with the agreement by all to arbitrate the dispute.

We need to know what has been lost to these implied contracts. Consider what birth certificates are, for example. Lately, a lot of states have birth certificates which no longer specify a "name"; instead, they specify a "subject." Look up "subject" in a dictionary: It means one who owes fealty to a sovereign. But this is backwards: We are the sovereigns in the first place. By signing a birth certificate, parents are handing over their children as subjects to the government which accepted the certificate.

Fortunately (again), the idea of constructive fraud is applicable, and, as an adult no longer under one's parents' command, one can revoke the signature of one's regents at birth (one's parents), thereby revoking the entire birth certificate.

Revocation of birth certificates is probably not something to be done first -- it's comparatively drastic for a lot of reasons. So what other things have been lost? What lost rights exist which would be less traumatic to recover?

I've discussed tax theory at some length above, and for good reason: It's my first target, and it's a good one, exactly because the materials with which to work are plentiful and good.

Having picked this target, one must begin to "take shots" at it. I mentioned this previously, but it bears a second address: It is possible to approach the target, namely the IRS, in a combative fashion right from the start. One can start right off the bat with assertions of one's place in the sovereignty, the inapplicability of the tax code to oneself, any number of entirely true but still quite rude statements. It is possible that one would get the same results that I did. But if one starts aggressively, one should expect to see a strong defensive reaction. Defensive reactions from large, well-funded, armed governmental organizations are bound to be...distasteful.

On the other hand, such a start betrays exactly that haughtiness which one must try to avoid, at least in the early stages. Eventually, the goal is indeed to assert the invalidity of the IRS' demands upon oneself, and so ultimately one will have to make some assertions that IRS officials won't like. But one is better off getting there slowly and lightly. And even at the end, one must always portray oneself as a reasonable man, demonstrating proper use of the legal mechanisms available, and never showing outright disrespect or dishonor for the target.

What happens when you start doing things like this?