The Planks We Walk On To Our Doom, Part 1

From Vision To America:

The Planks We Walk to Our Doom – Part 1


By Joel McDurmon
Published: October 17, 2008


It is not a stretch to say that America is not what it used to be. Many American Vision regulars will readily identify with the sentiment. What needs to be pushed, however, is a reminder about how and in what ways we have changed. The program we have followed and where we have ended up needs commentary.

It was Wednesday’s discussion by Dick Jones that stirred me to put these connections on paper. I have thought about them for a long time. The idea that Communism was a real threat not so long ago, yet is almost forgotten today, presents a classic example of the American public’s short memory. Mention Marxism in a conversation today and you will almost definitely be hearing crickets in a short time. No one cares: it’s history. The wall fell, we won, move on.




Yes, the Wall fell, but it fell in our direction. No one talks about this. The Soviet Union fell, but Marxism and Socialism have long flooded all of Western and Eastern Civilization. America is no exception. Marxism is history, but Marxism has never been more dangerous than now, when it stands ready to expand further into every office of government, and when we are yet asleep to it.



So let me briefly state my problems with America as it has come to be. First, we pride ourselves on free-market economics and private ownership of property, but these ideas have been phantoms as long as there has been property tax, which is little more than rent paid to government. If you disbelieve that, then try to go a year or two without paying your property tax, and you will learn who your landlord is. You will be fined, jailed, or “your” property will have a lien filed against it, or will be confiscated. We don’t own so much as rent from the government. That we have a free-market is likewise ridiculous to defend in the light of recent events. If the Federal Reserve can “print” money at will, and the U. S. Treasury can buy stakes in bank shares, then the market is not free of either State manipulation or intervention.



Secondly, we have a heavy progressive (or “graduated”) income tax. For the few who may not know, “graduated” means that those who make more money should not only pay more tax based on equal percentage of tax, but should also bear the added burden of an increased percentage. Greater wealth is disproportionately taxed, which penalizes and discourages financial success. The graduated system is unfair, arbitrary, and unbiblical. The United States instituted the graduated income tax by the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.

Thirdly, we have strong anti-family laws, including inheritance tax. In other words, when you die and leave wealth to your children or other designees, the government grabs anywhere from 18-55% of the amount for its purposes. This is a denial of the sacredness of the family as a unit, and the rights of families to determine the use of their own wealth. It is also a double tax on property, and a blatant attempt to again penalize wealth. It diminishes successful families’ strength in that it detracts from parents’ ability to advance their children’s future. Thus, it is an attack on the traditional family structure and leadership in society in general.




Fourthly, following almost immediately on America’s 1913 imposition of income tax, was America’s lesser-known 1913 Inflation Tax, which came in the form of the Federal Reserve. America’s first central bank was proposed by Alexander Hamilton and created in 1791. It was closed twenty years later, and continued off and on due to mass opposition until the covert form emerged into law in 1913. Hamilton had been among the most radical Statists of the fathers, but his desire for controlling currency was Constitutionally given to the legislative branch. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 essentially overrides this Constitutional feature and allows a national bank to regulate credit and the money supply. With recent events, the fall of many banks has left primarily only a few big banks standing. This “crisis” and the mindless and immoral actions of congress to go along with the “Bailout” have pushed the national bank closer to an exclusive monopoly.



Fifthly, we have many, massive, subsidized government programs. These are all transfers of wealth based on factors other than the market. There are too many to name here, but farm subsidies come to mind: farmers are paid in various ways in order to manipulate crop prices across the board. Ethanol has been subsidized to the tune of $10 billion. This diverts corn from other markets into an otherwise market-doomed purpose (ethanol would never brew in a free market); not only does the public get hit with the $10B, it also suffers a rise in the price of meat and other products that require otherwise market-rate corn. These billions are a miniscule part of the overall government subsidy equation.

Sixthly, and finally for now, we have compulsory public education regulated at federal, state, and local levels. Compulsory, because even if we home school or private school our children, we are still compelled to pay taxes for public schooling. Public, because the taxes are used to fund government-run schools. This tax-funded schooling is presented as free, of course, but it is only free to those who don’t pay property taxes. Government spends about $700 Billion per year on public education, just for primary and secondary levels. The State determines whether, when, and what you will teach your kids. If people want to participate in this system, that is fine with me, but do not compel me to pay for it. This is a denial of freedom. Also, when schools function legally as “in place of the parents,” the State has again usurped the role of the family.




Why the Concern?



The concern over these particular aspects of modern America is that they are all innovations imposed upon America in direct contrast to either the Constitution or the traditions of our founding Fathers. And more to the point is the source of these points of discussion: I have lifted them all from the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The reason these points are un-American and anti-biblical is that their source was anti-tradition and anti-Christian in principle.



What I have described above are roughly seven of the ten “planks” of the Communist Manifesto. I could probably work to show others, but time and necessity are both wanting. The relevant points are these (1, 2, 3, 5, 7/9, 10):

relevant points are these (1, 2, 3, 5, 7/9, 10):




1. (1) Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.



2. (2) A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.



3. (3) Abolition of all right of inheritance.



4. (5) Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.



5. (7) Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state . . .



6. (9) Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries . . .



7. (10) Free education for all children in public schools.



The historical connections are clear, too. For example, the springs of the graduated income tax in America flow directly from Marxism. The connection is direct and unmistakable. The first group in American history to advocate the graduated income tax was the Socialist Labor Party, a dedicated collection of Marxists founded originally as the “Workingman’s Party of American” in the People’s Republic of New Jersey in 1876. Their 1887 platform[1] unashamedly declared “we strive for the acquisition of political power.” Among their many “Social Demands” lay “Progressive income tax and tax on inheritances; but smaller incomes to be exempt.”



The short-lived Populist Party followed in 1892. Their platform decried “a vast conspiracy against mankind” to demonetize silver and monopolize gold in the hands of a few, among others things. The document contains classic Marxist verbiage, accusing “bondholders” of wanting to “decrease the value of . . . human labor,” and to “fatten usurers, bankrupt enterprise, and enslave industry.”[2] The party died out quickly but had a lasting impact, much of its platform being picked up by the Democratic Party the following election year.

It was then in 1896 that William Jennings Bryan gave that most famous political speech in American history: the “Cross of Gold” speech. Bryan adapted ideas of the former Marxist groups. Already two years prior he had argued in favor if the income tax, and was now calling it “a just law” and further pushing for the inflation of the money supply. The success of his speech derives from his successful weaving of Marxism and Christian language. Lines like “[tarrif] protection has slain its thousands the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands,” echoed to the religious mi nd unreligiously bent on envy of wealth. He called his crusade a “righteous cause” and “holy.” It was brilliant political propaganda. Unequally yoking Marx and Christ (2 Cor. 6:14-18), Bryan argued that the gold standard would be a crucifixion of the “producing masses” and the “toiling masses.” The famous concluding lines leveraged the suffering of Christ for the Marxist agenda: “you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”




And lest we forget the fundamentally anti-religious nature of this plank of socialism in the country, the Socialist Party platform of 1887 demanded “Separation of all public affairs from religion; church property to be subject to taxation” (note the irony here: the church cannot get involved in public affairs, but the public treasury should benefit from the church’s property). What the Socialist Party could not accomplish with is explicitly anti-church platform, Bryan and his Democrats accomplished by appropriating biblical language to say the same thing.

Likewise, the socialization of education stems directly from the work of early dedicated socialists in America. The “Father of the Common Schools” was Massachusetts lawyer and politician Horace Mann (1796-1858). He predates Marx, and thus is not dependent on him, nor was Mann an atheist like Marx, but an enthusiastic church-goer. His theology, however, was suspect, as he embraced Unitarianism in its early days when it was mission-minded-presenting itself as the culmination of Protestantism and ready to lead the direction of the natural order. Mann rejected orthodox Calvinism and believed strongly in the “perfectibility of man.”[3] This naturalistic belief was, however, couched in religious language: public education would eliminate ignorance, poverty, and crime. In his system, the State replaced both the church and the family: “Society, in its collective capacity, is a real, not a nominal sponsor and god-father for all its children.”[4] Rushdoony summarizes, “Mann’s work was two-fold, first to secularize education, and, second, to make it the province of the state rather than the community and the parents.” The story of the socialization of education, then, is the product of unbiblical theology. It results in an unbiblical view of education and society that abolishes the role of church and family.




Footnotes:

[1] “The Socialist Labor Party of North America Platform,” 1887; http://www.slp.org/pdf/platforms/plat1887.pdf, accessed October 16, 2008.

[2] “National People’s Party Platform”; http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5361, accessed October 16, 2008.

[3] Quoted in R. J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education: Studies in the History of the Philosophy of Education (Philipsburg, NJ: Prebyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1963), 19.

[4] Quoted in R. J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education, 24.