Freedom - If You Want It

The 19th century writer Henry David Thoreau went to jail for not paying his taxes and wrote an essay about it entitled On Civil Disobedience.I hold no brief for him from a philosophical standpoint as his writing spawned the environmentalist movement of the 20 and 21st century but he is an interesting though sadly rare example of someone who understood the essential tyranny of taxation and the implicit violation of liberty it entails.Precious few others have taken a stand.Indirectly we have to come up to the present day almost with Ken Dodd who simply did not file his tax returns but he did not explicity consciously stand on principle in so doing although his comments suggested that he understood the prevailing evil of the system when he remarked that he kept his money around his house because he thought society was going to collapse in the 70s and he needed to take precautions against such a calamitious eventuality. He was spared jail only because he was practically universally loved as a national treasure and comic genius adding immeasurably to the joy of nations and the tyranical State dared not risk the wrath of the people by incarcerating him and therby possibly precipitating a mass revolt against such a tyranical tax system.Lester Pigott on the other hand being a less sympathetic character faced the full rigor of the law's wrath and was promptly jailed for similar act of 'tax evasion'.The State is sinuous and serpentine in its carefully selective deprivations of people's liberty.Other than that no other high profile case springs to mind although Phillip Green's heroic avoidance of tax has to be commended alongside Vodafone's.To be fair however, there are perhaps many more such fine examples except that I do not have further details myself.

Next time I will discuss how such abovementioned examples could be utilised into a more general and systematic mass resistance programme against the bully looter State.