Americans should be outraged at the abuse of power demonstrated by the Biden Administration’s Justice Department. This week’s very public raid on former president Donald Trump’s home ostensibly over some documents that somebody thinks should be in the National Archives is a dire signal to all who wish to remain free. It cannot be said enough. This show of force can be applied to anyone who opposes these usurpers of Liberty and destroyers of the Constitution. Combined with the passage of the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which funds the addition of 87,000 IRS agents and sets up a green energy enforcement structure, is hammering nails in the coffin of this Republic.
Case in point is a letter IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig sent to senators on August 4. He wrote: “These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans. As we’ve been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around the Department of the Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000. Other resources will be invested in employees and IT systems that will allow us to better serve all taxpayers, including small businesses and middle-income taxpayers. Enhanced IT systems and taxpayer service will actually mean that honest taxpayers will be better able to comply with the tax laws, resulting in a lower likelihood of being audited and a reduced burden on them.”
You don’t take $80 billion dollars to add 87,000 enforcement agents to police just 1.8% of taxpayers, something that is already done mostly by computer. In fact, the Inflation Reduction Act raises taxes on small businesses and corporations, which will in turn, raise the cost of goods and services and lower every American’s disposable income. And there will be an additional 87,000 enforcers to invade your privacy and keep you in line. This is soft tyranny in the very least. Alexis de Tocqueville defines soft tyranny in his book Democracy in America, Volume II (1840): “It [the government] covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.”
He writes, “The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” Ephesians 6:12-13 says, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against power, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” Can you see/feel the specter of the enforcer? Soft tyranny is evil. Stand against it.
Sources:
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/commissioners-letter-to-the-senate.pdf
https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-American-Families-Plan-Tax-Compliance-Agenda.pdf
