The Wilmington morning star., 1947-06-09
AsPeglerSeesh
Bv PEGLER
Copyright, 1s47, by King Features Syndicate

By WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1s47, by King Features Syndicate
NEW YORK, June 8.-As most OF us cltlzens
and our government seldom remember, the
United States was established for the selfish
purpose of promoting the general welfare OF
her people and securing the blessings OF
liberty to them and their posterlty. To &C
complish these purposes and to defend our
nation. Congress was authorized to levy taxes.
The original method of taxation was naive by
the standards of this day, but the purpose OF
taxation never has been changed. 1t was
then and it still is to pay the expenses of the
operation of our government and OF the de-
tense of our country. We never had any In
tention to promote the general welfare OF
Greece. Turkey or Great Britain, or to defend
them against communism or any other enemy
Our people have never authorized Congress
or any President from Washington down to
Truman to spend our earned money for this
purpose.
No amendment to the Constitution has been
adopted which, by any stretch Of the magma
ton or distortion Of truth, could justify the
COueCl1On OIL income taxes rom ALlcllCdI
citizens for the governments of other nations.
such a proposal would fiout the very intent
stated in the preamble. The Greek and Tur-
kish governments may be momentary, as soon
to be forgotten and their debts with them, as
any of the thousands of June-bug lunchwa CONS
and petty retail stores whose casual and I'M
noticed failures account for an enormou pro-
portion of our bankruptcy roll, year by year.
Since the start of this century we have seen
eight monarchies fall throughout the Balkans,
like the bosses of our own underworld. Not
half of our own people can remember when
Servia, later to be called Serbia. then to be
absorbed IN Yugoslavla, was a Balkan king
dom, and Montenegro was another. The Bal
kan borders are elastic, stretching this way
and that like battle lines, and the border peo-
Piles have no sense of nationality or loyalty.
They have seen many occasions when they
were on one side at the start of a war and
shooting at their own comrades at the finish.
In the last one, the Greeks hailed the poor.
lucklesS English Tommies who were sent down
to help delay the nazis, but many Of the same
Greeks were shooting up other Tommies when
the Germans had been driven out. The Ameri-
can people don't know anything about their
minute politics and the scurrying changes, so
like the frantic rushing about of microbes on
a slide, and we never will. These peoples
themselves know very little more than that
they hate the dirty dogs in yonder valley be-
cause OF something that happened sometime.
The British nation has been permanent as
we reckon permanence among nations, but
that mere fact gives Britain no more right to
impose taxes on George Spelvin, American,
than Greece has. If an American citizen de-
faults his income tax today and the treasury
gets a judgment and sells him out on the
courthouse steps, after the manner of a not
so-olden day, we then have the spectacle Of
Uncle Sam forcibly taking a citizens property
which he has earned by work and saved by
denial and handing it over to some unidenti-
fled Englishman. The Englishman may be
one of those sullen miners who decided they
would rather see their country die than give
an honest days work to save her. Or he may
be a very fine fellow, a hero of the war, a
worker and all of that. But, whatever his
identity and character, the American citizen
has no obligation under our constitution and
our laws to work to earn taxes to support him.
Most of our people have absolutely no re-
collection of the original debates on the in
come tax law and the income tax amendment.
Some were wonderfully prophetic, although
the men who warned us then were scoffed at
like those later stalWarts who stood red-faced
to warn us against the communist treachery
and to commend the Dies committee for it's
revelations. These men predicted that, given
this great power to practice extravaganza and
to make the people pay for it by income taxes,
lQtuIc Congresses ana FTeSlQenIS WOulQ ulfOW
our earnings to the breeze like Saturday night
sports in a roaring camp. They warned us
that ten thousand spies and catchpolls would
be turned loose among us to ask questions
about our private affairs which, up to that
time, no American citizen had ever had to
answer to anybody except when he was sen,
to prison for a felony. They predicted that
we would become a card-index people listed
In data showing how much we gave to support
our aged parents how mIch tn the church anc
how much, it any, to maintain a mistress, ano
this has come true. And they told. us, but we
would not listen, that FOR every dollar of tax
that we paid under this amendment, we would
have to work a length of time at our jobs.
Today a dollars worth of work is about 4:
minutes for most of us, so a man who pays
5000 a wear in income tax works $50 hours tc
paw his share. That is almost four 40-hod III
weeks every year. Now, without any con.
s%ultation of his wishes, a certain proportion
of it is earmarked for foreign governments
Let us assume that out of his particular in.
come tax our government gives foreign gov.
ernments $l2. so. That means almost 10 hours,
or ID DAYS a year, which is quite a large
mower tn free, involuntary labor when YOU
multiply it by sixty million.
Tn some ways the Americans are very
shrewd. In other ways other peoples are
shrayuder Nobody ever heard of the peonle
of anv other nation beng put to involuntary
labor TOR an average of 10 hours a wear ~.
naid for the benefit Of the people a g.
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