It is well understood (though much less appreciated) that the American Founders wrote a Constitution and designed a system to limit the power of the federal government.
Less well understood is WHY they did so. Our Founders believed that the greatest threat to personal freedom was not from foreign governments, but rather from an oppressive domestic government. They did not design federalism and limited government because it was more efficient, or more productive, or more elegant. They did so because they simply didn’t trust government.
Our founders realized that, with a large, powerful, intrusive government, your freedom is only as secure as the virtue of whatever mid-level functionary whose path you are so unfortunate as to cross.
The latest example, of course, is the admission that the IRS actively discriminated against groups with a particular political viewpoint, in this case Tea Party and conservative groups. Every few hours, the scandal widens and the discrimination broadens. But if this is what they’ve admitted to up front, one can’t help but wonder what they are hiding.
Whether the abuses were committed by mid-level bureaucrats with an ax to grind or acting on orders from higher-ups is politically tantalizing, but not necessarily relevant to the observation that when we continually empower government agencies with more and more control over our lives, our freedom is in peril.
There are some immediate and obvious implications from having been reminded that we can’t trust the IRS:
- Compliance with our current complicated and intrusive tax code requires the submission of more and more personal financial information to the IRS. We cannot trust them to safeguard this information. So the tax code must be simplified and migrated toward a consumption tax, which involves far less intrusive information demands upon taxpayers.
- Enlisting the IRS as the enforcement mechanism for Obamacare makes a bad thing much worse. The IRS will have access to at least some of your personal health information. This is unacceptable, and it’s further justification for outright repeal of the legislation.
- The IRS plan for a “real time tax system” and “return free” tax compliance, where the IRS has access to your personal financial information, computes your tax liability for you, and simply sends you a bill, is an affront to our system of voluntary tax compliance and should be rejected outright. The IRS has earned opprobrium, not trust.
Finally, it’s clear that the movement to limit the spending and power of the federal government is riling some powerful enemies within the Government Class, and they’ll use whatever power they have to fight back, whether it’s IRS harassment, purposely delaying flights, or releasing felons. Restoring some semblance of limited government is going to require stiff spines on the part of our elected leaders, and faithful engagement on the part of the citizenry.