E Unum Pluribus
on January 15, 2016 at 9:59 amThank God I grew up in dirt-floored chicken houses, old barns and shacks. And in cotton fields since I was eight years old. That was the beginning of an education much superior than anything I learned when I finally attended university starting at 28-years-old. My old grandpa called it “learning common sense.”
Military; Vietnam; being a cop; traveling for a year on a motorbike living in a tent, working odd jobs and staying with Navajos at Four Corners, living with poor black sharecroppers in Mississippi, hanging out on Bourbon Street. . .; competing as a professional fighter; going to wars. . .Call it a PhD in life.
Having left home at 17 on my own, I might have developed a “Progressive” attitude with its attendant attitudes of “social justice” and “fairness.” Why, I asked myself, should an athlete or a Hollywood star earn millions while a teacher or a cop—who contribute much more to society—earn such a comparative pittance?
So many so-called “intellectuals” and “the educated” never think things through beyond this infantile approach.
While I “learned common sense” by knocking about the world, two equally valuable lessons I learned from the Bible and the U.S. Constitution.
God requires a tax of ten percent be levied equally on every citizen rich or poor, out of which officials are paid and social programs operated. (Deuteronomy 26:12). A man earns one million dollars, his percentage amounts to one hundred thousand dollars; a worker earning one thousand dollars pays one hundred dollars.
The U.S. Constitution adopted the same impartial approach to taxation by requiring that all taxes “be uniform throughout the United States.” (Art. I, Sec. 8)
E Pluribus Unum on the Great Seal of the U.S. means “out of many, one.” This became E Unum Pluribus (“out of one, many”) after 1913 when the 16th Amendment passed to initiate “progressive taxation”—which, incidentally, comes directly from Karl Marx. The new Income Tax singled out the wealthy and successful for higher taxation. Thus treating citizens differently.
“There is nothing that prevents government from taking 100 percent of income from the wealthy,” President Barack Obama is quoted as having stated.
So how has this worked out?
Two parallel anti-Biblical (and anti-Constitutional) paradigms now teach citizens to see themselves not as a whole but instead as members of various groups falling victim to each other—black, white, or brown; gay or straight; rich or poor; old or young; male or female. . . Progressive politicians pit one group against the others by enacting laws such as Hate Crime statutes and special acts that protect and support one group at the expense of others that are excluded.
Like the separate cylinders of a worn-out old internal combustion engine, these splintered groups bang and bash against each other until the engine explodes.
E Unum Pluribus.
What if the President of the United States was trying to topple the nation—and you found out about it?
From A Thousand Years of Darkness, a thriller by Charles W. Sasser. Available in paperback and e-books from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.
Agree, but I would also add that the USA/The American People need to go to a consumption tax (the Fair Tax proposal) in lieu of income taxes, capital gains taxes, payroll, inheritance taxes and property taxes. Then we could get rid of the IRS and State tax bureaucracies which determine who is “worthy” (a winner & loser) of tax exemptions. The idea of confiscating one’s property — paid for by after tax dollars — for failure to annually pay income and/or property taxes is economic servitude and antithetical to freedom. With a pay-as-you-go/spend Fair Tax, individual Americans would be more attentive to government spending and have a built in protest mechanism to starve irresponsible spending, to include government catering to “E Unim Pluribus” or group lootings of the public treasury.
Well said, my friend. When the Income Tax was instituted, the top rate was 3%. One congressman wanted to know why, if government could take 3%, what prevented it taking 10% or 20%. The response was, “Why the American people would never stand for it.”
My reservation against flat tax is that it might begin at 10%, but what keeps it from raising to 20% or 90%?
People are going to lose on this matter, no matter what.
Thank you for your enlightening comment.
chuck sasser
Mark 3:24-25 warns us against the actions of our nation’s internal enemies as does James 3:16.
Absolutely, Jim. Absolutely. chuck sasser
Right on, brother!
Morning, Sally. Thank you, girl. chuck sasser
Well said,.Chuck. Always love to read your posts.
Thank you, Bonnie. God bless. chuck sasser