Good Texas Common Sense
A series of articles concerning what the new government of the Republic of Texas should be and do, what the Constitution for the Republic of Texas should be and say, and the philosophical (common sense) reasons behind these statements.
Copyright at Common Law 1996, Donald Dale Henson, sui juris. This article may be reproduced and distributed using any media as long as the article, the author's name, and this copyright notice remain together and unchanged.
Article 6
Keeping Government Under Control
by Donald
Dale Henson, sui juris
Ok. So we have successfully navigated all the pitfalls of big government and have written a constitution that grants government only a few well-defined functions. We now have a republic where the individual is sovereign and the government is the servant of the people. So what? This is exactly the situation just after the ratification of the Constitution For the united States and look what has happened to that great nation. How can we in the Republic of Texas prevent that same situation from occurring here in the next hundred years or so? What can we do to stop the growth of government? Maybe nothing. Government is a very tenacious parasite and has thus far successfully resisted all efforts to eradicate it. But let's have a look and see what we might be able to do differently this time that may give us a better chance of keeping government under control.
The primary way that govenment grows is by passing laws. If we elect legislators to a legislative body, then we expect them to do their job by legislating something. But let's face it. There's only so many laws needed in a free society so once all the necessary laws are legislated, what do the legislators do to show that they are doing their job? They start passing unneccesary but 'good' laws. Laws such as mandatory attendance at government-run public schools. Laws such as a 'safety net' for poor people when they get old and can no longer work. Laws protecting children by keeping them out the workplace where they might learn how to actually make a living. Laws requiring people to stop working at age 65 even if they are capable of producing for another thirty years or so. And so it goes. Pretty soon we find ourselves drowning in government rules, regulations, and forms and wonder what happened. After all, we elected only good people to the legislative body. Why did they betray us like this? And of course all these rules, regulations, and forms require the government to have more and more revenue in order to support all the 'good' laws. This brings us to the second major way that a government grows. Revenue.
A government only exists on paper or in the minds of the people and can only affect the real world thru the actions of individuals. If the IRS had no agents, then who would fear it? Most individuals will not work for long without some kind of compensation. If government can compensate individuals, this implies that government has some kind of revenue from which to pay compensation. So if we remove the revenue source from government, it will no longer be able to pay its individual agents and the government's power will evaporate. So it would appear that one way to control government is to control it's revenue stream. But how can we do this effectively?
First, we can write our constitution so that there is no legislature so the government will not be able to legislate a revenue source. This is probably the most important reason not to have a legislative body in the Republic of Texas. But will this be sufficient to place government under effective control? I fear not unless we take one more additional step. If we allow government, however it is constituted, to collect taxes of any kind, then we have lost control. The power to collect taxes grants government the power to use force to sustain itself. And this it will do. With a vengeance. Even if we state specifically in the constitution that only such and such taxes will be collected and only at such and such a rate, we have opened the door. We have said in our constitution that it is ok for the government to use force to collect its revenue. And this tiny crack in an otherwise solid document will be widened until all the horrors of the current US tax system will be upon us and we will have, once again, lost the battle for liberty.
But, you say, if we don't grant government the power to tax, how will we finance those functions of government that we want? The answer is that we who like what government is doing will voluntarily contribute to support it. Those of us who don't like what government is doing will reduce our voluntary contributions in proportion to how much we don't like it. This places the government squarely in the free market system just like all other services as government will only get paid if government is reponsive to the people as individuals.
So now, in addition to the 'standard' restrictions on government, we have disallowed any kind of taxation and have refused the government the power to create any by not creating a legislative body. So we are done. Right? I'm afraid not. Remember that these scalawag politicians are pretty slick and are extremely good at 'creative' interpretations of the rules. A major revenue source for government that we have overlooked above is the power to create and issue currency. How is this a revenue source? Well, if you had the power to print your own money and the power to force people to accept it as money, would you need any other revenue source? This is exactly what the United States Government did. It created the Federal Reserve and gave it the sole power to issue currency without any backing whatsoever. This was possible because the constitution granted Congress the power to coin money and regulate the value of foreign currency (i.e., Federal Reserve Notes).
This power, along with the power to grant charters, was used to create and empower the Federal Reserve. With this power comes the power to control the value of the currency. (If you increase the amount of currency in circulation without any increase in goods and services, the price of the goods and services rise. This is called inflation but is in reality currency devaluation.) So, when the government needs some money, it borrows it from the Federal Reserve. And since the Federal Reserve can print the money without any backing, this source cannot be depleted. Therefore, the government has an infinite source of revenue. (This has a side effect of making it possible to borrow money and pay back the loan with cheaper dollars which is an incentive to spend rather than invest.) So perhaps we should restrict our Republic of Texas government from issuing or causing to be issued any kind of currency and leave currency to the free market. And perhaps it would be a good idea to make government pay all its obligations with gold or silver just to make sure they don't sneak currency creation in the back door by issuing government IOUs or something.
Well, it seems we have covered all the bases. But keep in mind how creative parasites such as politicians can be. I have one more vital element to add to our structure to control government. Since we want to make government responsive to individuals, we must allow individuals to file complaints in Common Law court against specific government agents for dereliction of duty or malfeasance in office. This is of course already implied in the Common Law system but I think it should be specifically spelled out in the constitution. Otherwise, the government will come up with some lame interpretation such as 'sovereign immunity' to muddy the waters and increase the power of government.
So my proposal for attempting to do a better job of controlling government is to make each individual powerful enough to control the government all by himself or herself if necessary, not allow the government any legislative powers, not allow government any power of taxation, and not allow government to control the issuance of currency. Eventually, of course, some slick politician will figure out a way around all the restrictions and we will be back on the big government track to tyranny once again. But, perhaps, these additional measures will extend the control period from 100 years to 200 years. I would be proud of such an accomplishment.
Does this make sense? Good Texas Common Sense?
Copyright at Common Law, West El Paso Information Network, 1996