No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce. On the contrary, the growth of a large parasitic class marked the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the collapse of Spain from the heights of its golden age.  (Thomas Sowell) 

   In the mid-nineties the U.S. Congress enacted a statute requiring that "every parent in the United States will be a child's first teacher and devote time each day to helping such parent's child learn," and "children will receive the nutrition, physical activity experiences, and health care needed to arrive at school with healthy minds and bodies." 
   It beggers the imagination why Congress would pass such a law. Were they convinced of a nation-wide crisis in parenting,  that American mothers and fathers were dangerously neglecting  to feed their pre-schoolers, and refusing to take them to the doctor when they were sick?   But according to Charlotte Twight, author of "Dependent On D.C.", the law makes perfect sense as part of the out-of-control federal government assuming over-weening authority in our daily lives. 

   In the areas of taxation, education, health care, and privacy, she says that all branches of government have gradually increased their power and control at our expense. Twight insists there is no vast conspiracy to destroy American freedoms.  Instead, she says that the expansion of government is occurring as the result of individual politicians, bureaucrats and other officials, sometimes in ideological groupings, wanting to make their jobs more secure, wanting to increase their stature, power, and range of influence. Twight says that Washington's raids on the autonomy and individual powers of American citizens began in earnest in the mid-1930's.  First, Washington needed to ensure a steady inflow of cash.

When the Social Security Act was passed by Congress in 1935, the public was told, and believed, they were being provided with a national insurance program to which they and their employers would be making matching contributions. The worker's contribution would be deducted from his paycheck before he received it, for his convenience. The insurance plan represented an obligation on the part of the government to provide for the worker's old age. 
   This is what Washington sent members of Congress out to tell the public. The Treasury Department contracted with Disney to make a cartoon extolling the insurance program. Supportive trailers were created to run at the ends of films shown at local movie houses. The American public was convinced. It all made sense. 

   The problem was that nothing the government was telling the public about the Social Security Act was true. The Act was not and had never been conceived by its proponents in Congress and Franklin Roosevelt's White House as an insurance program. There is, in fact, nothing in the Act legally obligating Washington to make payments to workers on retirement.  That is left entirely to the whim of Congress. 

There are not and never have been individual Social Security accounts. Social Security receipts have never, except for the first few months, been set apart from all other tax monies flowing into Washington.  The so-called contributions are an enforced tax. (There is nothing volunteered, as the term 'contributions' implies).  Employers merely reduce what they would otherwise pay their workers in order to cover the cost of their 'contributions', thus the worker pays it all. But with the passage of the Act, the goals of Congress, the Treasury  Department and the President had been perfectly accomplished: a vastly increased transfer of money to Washington. 

   Very soon, the country was embroiled in World War Two, and the mood of the public was strongly patriotic. Congress easily passed the Victory Tax, a flat-rate tax over and above the regular income tax. And this tax also was mandated to be deducted from paychecks by employers. There was not even a murmer from the public.  Washington's authority to take our money before we saw it was reinforced and we got used to it. 
 

   By 1943, without much public outcry, the Current Tax Payment Act was passed, mandating the withholding of workers' federal income taxes from their paychecks. Up to this point, workers had saved up for their taxes, and by saving for them earned interest that actually reduced what they had to pay out of pocket.  No more.  Now the full amount would be paid as the worker was paid. And all to be accomplished by a third party -- the employer. The employer, by this time, had become accustomed to providing Washington detailed information about every worker.  The rates for all the taxes now being deducted from paychecks were left open-ended, and would begin rising almost immediately. 

   Twight quotes remarks made by Elisha Friedman, a former Treasury Department official who was acting as an economic consultant to Congress at the time. She says he "spoke admiringly of Fraser Elliott, the Canadian commissioner of taxation: '[Elliott] made it plain that an essential principle in taxation is "Don't do anything suddenly"...He said "We must follow a 
policy of doing things so gradually that it is politically acceptable to the voters:...You have got to get the people's minds accustomed to things. You have got to work out the political angle, and you have got to work out the administration. 

You cannot do it suddenly.' Elisha Friedman explained...'if you were trying to cure a man of the drink habit, you wouldn't cut off his supply of liquor all at once. You would do it gradually.'" Twight adds, "Note that in this ex-Treasury official's view, wanting to retain one's own income was a kind of pathology, or at least a bad habit, badly in need of a 'cure' by the wise men of government."  Getting at taxable income before the worker saw his money, making it possible to increase taxes with less resistence....all had indeed been accomplished 'gradually'. 

   Twight's picture of the federal government is not pretty.  It is a government of laws and regulations so complex that few lawmakers understand them, and ordinary citizens might find  themselves in violation at any time.  It is a picture of some of the men and women we send to Washington as our representatives becoming enamored of power, becoming contemptuous 
of us, willing to work with special interest groups against our interests. They begin to view our work incomes as their own money.  They consider that we have, still, too much autonomy and might at any time revolt and so, must be monitored in a variety of intrusive ways.  They learn time-tested strategies for getting our acquiesence to policies and programs whose functions are, primarily, to add to their power and prestige and to minimize our choices and interference. 

  In particular, Twight explains how Washington deflects or diverts our concerns with a fog of  misinformation, distortions, lies and distractions.  Though the politicians and their special interest groups say often that citizens must get involved, in fact getting involved, accessing information and effectively protesting programs are deliberately made difficult and time 
consuming, with the knowledge that most citizens will give up.  Twight calls this formidable obstruction to citizen participation "transactional costs."   She explains that some of those costs are normal, but that a great many more are especially contrived. 

   Since last September 11th, many of us have learned what we could about Islam, the religion of the terrorists who declared war on us.  We've learned that Islam as a religion teaches its followers not to get involved in politics, that politics are unclean and should be left to whoever is leading their country.  A brief survey of Muslim countries shows us the consequences of this
practice....extreme poverty, ignorance and political repression.  The American heritage, on the other hand, is one of active political participation, noisy and chaotic though that often is.   Such a heritage, as our Founding Fathers warned us, requires constant vigilance and knowledge of what is done in our name in Washington. 

Twight says she is unsure whether the growth of the federal government can be reversed since current generations are fast losing knowledge of what is being lost.  In the public schools children are deliberately taught not to think, deliberately kept ignorant of Western civilization's history and traditions, and especially that of the United States. Self-reliance has been replaced by reliance on government and on social science 'experts.'  American citizens are losing not only confidence in their ability to make their own way, but also the certain knowledge that such autonomy is desirable and to be treasured.  Instead, citizens vie with each other for victim status, which translates into parasite status, as Thomas Sowell has noted. But who are the chief parasites draining our country of prosperity and freedoms? According to Dr. Twight, that distinction belongs to Washington. 

                                                   -- Peggy Whitcomb

The quote by Thomas Sowell at the top is from his book "Barbarians Inside the Gates", which is a collection of his columns. 

© 2002 Peggy Whitcomb