Second Qualification for Voting
The second requirement is that being a taxpayer should be a prerequisite to voting. Mill stressed the point that those who are required to pay the taxes will make a more intelligent and thoughtful decision as to whom they put in charge of the tax-collecting authority. Mill also emphasized that he did not consider an indirect or easy tax to be sufficient to fulfill this requirement. In other words, a sales tax or payroll tax that is paid in what amounts to easy installments will not affect the average citizens enough to make them conscious of the fact that their government is depriving them of their property. This point is easy to demonstrate by considering the current federal income tax. The average taxpayer never realizes how much money he has paid in taxes until around April the fifteenth when he finally gets around to filing his income tax statement. Note that when the taxpayer files a form, the money has already been oh-so-gently removed from his pocket by the federal tax collector. Other than uttering a momentary groan, the taxpayer never really displays much resistance to this annual fleecing. But what would happen if all citizens were required to pay their taxes in one lump sum at the end of the year? How long would it take for the recall petitions to be filed? How long would it be before we had a Congress that was willing to cut taxes, reduce spending, and decrease the size of an overgrown federal bureaucracy? Again quoting from Mill,
It is also important, that the assembly which votes the taxes, either general or local, should be elected exclusively by those who pay something towards the taxes imposed. Those who pay no taxes, disposing by their votes of other people’s money, have every motive to be lavish and none to economize. As far as money matters are concerned, any power of voting possessed by them is a violation of the fundamental principle of free government;… It amounts to allowing them to put their hands into other people’s pockets for any purpose which they think fit to call a public one … the indirect taxes. … But this mode of defraying a share of the public expenses is hardly felt: the payer, unless a person of education and reflection, does not identify his interest with a low scale of public expenditure as closely as when money for its support is demanded directly from himself; … It would be better that a direct tax, in the simple form of a capitation, should be levied on every grown person in the community; or that every such person should be admitted an elector on allowing himself to be rated extra ordiem to the assessed taxes; or that a small annual payment, rising and falling with the gross expenditure of the country, should be required from every registered elector; that so everyone might feel that the money which he assisted in voting was partly his own, and that he was interested in keeping down its amount.10
Third Qualification for Voting
The third requirement is that those who support their existenceawith relief (i.e., welfare, public housing, etc.) should not be allowed to exercise the privilege of voting. Again let us look to Mill:
I regard it as required by first principles, that the receipt of parish relief should be a peremptory disqualification for the franchise. He who cannot by his labour suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights with them in other respects. Those to whom he is indebted for the continuance of his very existence may justly claim the exclusive management of those common concerns, to which he now brings nothing, or less than he takes away. As a condition of the franchise, a term should be fixed, say five years previous to the registry, during which the applicant’s name has not been on the parish books as a recipient of relief.11
Fourth Qualification for Voting
Mill would also deny the privilege of voting to those who take advantage of bankruptcy and thereby shift their personal burden upon society who must, through higher prices, insurance rates, and lending rates, finance another’s failure.
To be certified bankrupt, or to have taken the benefit of the Insolvent Act should disqualify for the franchise until the person has paid his debts or at least proved that he is not now, and has not for some long period been, dependent on eleemosynary support.12
The basic principle of the franchise is that citizens should not be disqualified except through their own fault, and no arbitrary barriers should be established by which any person is permanently excluded. The privilege must be open to all who are willing to earn it.
It is not useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as much political power as knowledge. … Men, as well as women, do not need political rights in order that they may govern, but in order that they may not be misgoverned.13
The sovereign community, through its representatives within each state, is the only authoritative source for establishing acceptable qualifications for voting. The only restraint that can legitimately be placed upon the sovereign community is that it must maintain a Republican form of government within its state (U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 4).
Some will protest that we are “repealing” the Voting Rights Act; this is not true! You do not repeal a fraud; you correct it. You do not recall a tyrant; you remove him. The same is true with the so-called Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act, as with all other Reconstruction legislation (see Chapter VI), must be annulled to restore the balance between the federal and state governments. These Reconstruction acts violate the principle of the consent of the governed within each of the sovereign communities of the South, and therefore they were invalid in their inception and are discriminatory in their enforcement. Thus, the South must use its political strength to terminate this illegitimate use of governmental force. The federal government does not have the right to deny the sovereign community the right to establish legitimate, non-arbitrary voting qualification!
CHAPTER 12
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
New England, which had been too conscientious to defend the national honor in the war with Great Britain, poured out almost her whole population to aid the extermination of a people. …1
Edward A. Pollard
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS
The Southern people have always taken the lead in the military defense of the United States. The nation knew that “when the chips were down” Southern “rednecks” could always be counted on to take up arms and defend our “reunited” country. Southerners were shocked to see their heritage slandered in the Northern press and by official United States government publications during the “Great War” (World War I). This action led the Sons of Confederate Veterans to issue The Gray Book shortly after the end of that conflict and again after World War II.
During the Korean War, seventy-eight Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded. Of these, thirty-two were given to Southerners. There were only three citizens from the city of New York who received this high honor, and one of the three had recently moved to the city from the South. This situation is not unusual. During the War of 1812, the North provided 58,552 soldiers to the war effort, while the South gave 96,812. During the war with Mexico, the North furnished only 23,054 soldiers, while the South provided 43,630.
In return for its willingness to serve the flag of the “reunited” nation, the South asks only to be left alone to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, the United States government has answered in the negative.
Cadet Thomas G. Jefferson of Amelia County, Virginia, a collateral descendant of President Thomas Jefferson. As a cadet at Virginia Military Institute, Jefferson took part in the Battle of New Market in which the boys ofVMI made history by their rout of veteran United States troops. Cadet Jefferson was wounded during the charge of cadets and died three days later in the arms of a comrade; he was seventeen years young. Deo Vindice!13 (Image courtesy of the Virginia Military Institute Archives, Lexington, Virginia)
Life
The Declaration of Independence demonstrates the American belief that government should be
based upon the consent of the governed. The Founding Fathers believed that government should be an agent of the people. They also knew that any government would possess the tendency to usurp the freedom and liberty that naturally belongs to the people. Thomas Jefferson thought that the best government was one of limited powers that left the people alone and that allowed them to work out their own destiny without undue meddling. Jefferson stated that it was the duty of government to allow the development of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.2
How have the people of the South been treated by their government in respect to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?
In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson made it clear that a legitimate government must accept the fact that the life of its citizens is an endowment from God. The right to life was given to all men [i.e., people] by their Creator, and therefore must not be arbitrarily taken from them by government. This is an accepted fact of our American political philosophy. We believe that we must not give our support to any form of government which would arbitrarily deny anyone the right to life.
The Constitution, as written by the Founding Fathers, had many features that were designed to protect life. The requirement for a writ of habeas corpus, grand jury indictment for capital cases, and the right of speedy and public trials was all designed to protect life.
The Founding Fathers and the people of the South have always held that:
Government cannot on its own volition take away a person’s life; and
Government must act in such a way as not to endanger the lives of its citizens. In the discharge of its function, government must act to protect the lives of the people so as not to have them endangered from external (enemy) powers.
We are not charging the government with wanton killing of Americans. So far we are safe from that form of intimidation. But the hands of the Northern liberal establishment are far from clean. Upon their hands is the blood of over one hundred thousand military youth murdered by the system of government controlled by Northern liberals. Only the commercial interests of the North benefitted from the last two no-win wars this country has fought. Our soldiers were ordered to go halfway around the globe to fight in the defense of freedom, but under no circumstance were they to win. Yes, “our” government is guilty of crimes against the “right to life” as defined by Jefferson. A look at recent history will reveal how our government has done this to our military personnel.
In both the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts, young Americans were sent to wage war—to fight and to die—but not to win. When any government makes that type of demand on its citizens, it is just as guilty of the destruction of their right to life as if it had taken those same citizens away from their home and shot them without benefit of a fair trial.
The Founding Fathers established a government that respected the sanctity of human life. They knew that if a government loses this respect for life, it loses its moral right to govern. It is not immoral for a country to go to war to defend itself, provided it fights to win. Citizens have a duty to defend their country if it is engaged in a morally defensible war. If the government constantly displays a tendency to undermine the well-being of its citizen-soldiers, then that government has no right to rule nor should it expect its people to give it their continued support. Consider the recent history of the liberal Northern government. Americans expect that when we go to war we will fight to win. This is a reasonable assumption because we are a nation of people who stand as equals before the law. The government has the duty to do all within its power to protect the lives of its citizens. If the political leadership of the nation requires its citizens to fight a war for any reason other than to win, then those politicians are toying with the lives of the country’s citizens. This is contrary to the purpose of government and as such constitutes an illegal act.
It would be reasonable to presume that a “democratic” government would not involve its citizens in a war in which it allows an unfair advantage to the enemy, such as safe havens from which to draw supplies and mass troops for attack. The reason it should not do so is because such action allows the enemy to increase his ability to kill its citizen-soldiers. This is contrary to the purpose of a “democratic” government, which is to do all within its power to protect the lives of its citizens. Too often in the recent past, our government has failed its duty to do all within its power to protect the lives of its citizen-soldiers.
With the failure of the armies of the South at the close of the War for Southern Independence, the original form of government, with its natural check on the abuse of federal power was, by revolution, removed. What we now have is a centralized federal government that has assumed the right to act as its own judge of the limits of its own power.
The idea of checks and balances within the nation has been reduced to the point that it only exists within the federal government itself. As long as the three branches of the federal government (executive, legislative, and judicial) are in line, one with the other (following the same policy, be it forced busing, or no-win wars), its will is supreme and cannot be checked. This is not as it was intended by the Founding Fathers, nor was this the type of government that our nation enjoyed for the first four decades of its independence. If the federal government could be called into account or could be prevented from usurping the rights of the citizens of the states (State’s Rights), there would be no such thing as forced busing, reverse discrimination, no-win wars, or a trillion-dollar national debt.
All of these examples of abuse of power by the central government are examples of just how far we have gone in the wrong direction as a nation. The “Boys in Gray” perceived that this would be the natural outcome if they lost the war. Perhaps that is why they fought so hard and so long for Southern independence.
Liberty
… [I]s life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.3
What is it about liberty that causes some men to prefer to suffer the pains of death than to live without it? What would make rational men such as Patrick Henry become radical and speak of dying as a martyr to freedom rather than living a dull life without liberty? As Thomas Paine has stated, “Only God knows how to put a proper price on such a commodity as liberty.” Indeed, all citizens must be willing to pay for their liberty or they will surely lose it.
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. … In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.4
In the world today, true liberty as advocated by John Stuart Mill is almost as rare and unseen as the Loch Ness Monster. Even among the Western “democratic” nations, individual liberty suffers at the hands of a complex, technological, centralized society—shades of A Brave New World. As society becomes more complex, it demands that government control more of that society. And what is it that government controls? It controls not its own growth and power but the liberty of the individual citizens within its domain. As government becomes more powerful, the citizens lose more liberty. Once this process has started, it becomes self-perpetuating and increases in a crescendo effect, sweeping under its relentless rush that which it was established to protect and serve, the people and their liberty. As an aside, let us note here that liberty is not meant to represent the absolute right to do anything one pleases, for that would be license, not liberty. Liberty is not license. Liberty, as defined by John Locke, has its own circumscribed limits. Locke teaches us that our liberty ends where it would do harm to others. For example, I have a right to own a car. I do not have the right to drive it in such a manner as to do harm to
others. Hence, liberty in a free society is liberty under the law. The law is derived and enforced by the free consent of those governed. The entire force of government vis-a-vis the individual should be directed toward maintaining the sovereignty of that individual. This is the expected action of a “just” government. To do less would stamp that government as “unjust” and therefore as a tyranny.
The South Was Right Page 30