Written by Ron Paul; Originally appeared at ronpaulinstitute.org
As Independence Day comes around again we should spend a few moments between barbecue and fireworks to think about the meaning of independence. The colonists who rebelled against the British Crown were, among other things, unhappy about taxation. Yet, as economist Gary North points out, the total burden of British imperial taxation was about one-to-two percent of national income.
Some 241 years later, Washington claims more of our money as its own than King George could have ever imagined. What do we get in this bargain? We get a federal government larger and more oppressive than before 1776, a government that increasingly views us as the enemy.
Think about NSA surveillance. As we have learned from brave whistleblowers like William Binney and Edward Snowden, the US intelligence community is not protecting us from foreigners who seek to destroy our way of life. The US intelligence community is itself destroying our way of life. Literally every one of our electronic communications is captured and stored in vast computer networks. Perhaps they will be used against “dissidents” in the future who question government tyranny.
We have no privacy in our computers or our phones. If the government wants to see what we are doing at any time, it simply switches on our phone camera or computer camera – or our “smart” television. Yet today we continue to hear, “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
In a recent interview on our Liberty Report, Edward Snowden made the excellent point that, “saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”
Think about the TSA. The freedom to travel is fundamental, and our Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures is the law of the land. But if you dare to exercise that right by purchasing an air ticket, you are treated like a Guantanamo Bay detainee. Don’t dare question as the TSA agents commit acts that would be crimes were they done by anyone else. Yet so many Americans still believe this is what it takes to be “safe.”
Think about the military industrial complex. The US government spends more on its military empire than much of the rest of the world combined. Our so-called mortal enemy Russia spends ten cents to every dollar we spend on weapons of war. Yet we are told we must spend more! Imagine the amazing peaceful scientific discoveries that might be made were so many researchers and scientists not on the government payroll designing new ways to end life on earth.
Think about the Fed. Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 the US dollar has lost some 98 percent of its value. Is the destruction of our currency not a cruel form of tyranny, hitting hardest those who can least afford it?
I think it’s time for us to declare our independence from an oppressive government that seeks to control our money and our lives in ways unimaginable to those who rebelled against the British Crown in 1776. Our revolution is peaceful, and it concentrates on winning hearts and minds one at a time. But it marches on. We must reclaim the spirit of independence every day and every night and intensify the struggle against those who seek to impose tyranny upon us.
Good article sir!
Its sad our freedoms have been eroded as much and no one seems to care.
I doubt there’s an American who wouldn’t agree with this. Unfortunately, he’s not a plastic puppet like Macron, so the banksters won’t gamble their zillions on him taking the White House.
Strange twist from Ron Paul. The opening paragraph brings up taxation, but the real issue was control. The American Colonists didn’t like being controlled by their masters across the pond. Taxation was only one form of that. Most of the rights in the U.S. Bill of Rights were identified as such because they were something the Crown had already restricted or taken away from the Colonists. To ignore all those intrusive control tools ignores that the Colonists were rebelling against an oppressive state.
To glorify the Bill of Rights as ‘defining’ freedom’ somehow is to restrict your freedom to elimination of a handful of control tools used by the Crown 250 years ago. If the people are too ignorant or their democracy too corrupt to move beyond those handful of rights, then you are just begging some other entity to take control of your state and be your master.
Ron Paul wants us to declare our independence from our (current) oppressive government? Great… how long will THAT last? If you don’t recognize HOW your government is being corrupted to control you, then replacing it isn’t going to solve ANYTHING.
Independence from what? Ron Paul needs to spell it out, the “Khazars”.
He sure does.
I suggest a better model than the one that America has is one built on the Iranian model. After America has a revolution and throw the old elite out, and the revolutionaries become the new elite, I suggest that the nation have a system of government in which there is a Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader does not leave office until he or she dies or is overthrown. With the American Revolution, George Washington could have fulfilled this role of Supreme Leader. A Supreme Leader is not concerned with the day to day running of the nation, they are more concerned with the broad policy of the nation, the direction in which it goes. The army is under the Supreme Leader’s control, rather than the president’s, as in Iran. The Supreme Leader stays fixed in position, as the presidents come and go, depending on federal elections. When the Supreme Leader gets too old, they will choose another Supreme Leader to take over. In this way, the meaning of the Revolution is preserved. There is a system of check and balance on the political election process – rich people cannot control the process entirely as the Supreme Leader can step in if the oligarchs become too powerful.
Another safeguard the US can introduce is the referendum system. Referenda are a part of a direct democracy – see Switzerland. Citizens can vote on policy themselves if there are enough citizens who want to do that, instead of leaving it up to their representatives. This will be another layer of checks and balances.
If the people elect the wrong person to be POTUS by mistake, the president cannot do that much damage. The citizens can use referenda to stop the president from making policies they think will harm them. In this way, the American people could have stopped the US involvement in Syria, Libya, Iraq etc. It would depend on the will of the people. This system can be used in any nation, not just the USA BTW.