In Defense of Ed and Elaine Brown

Friday, 16 March 2007
Paper Number One
Copyright 2007 Glenn David.

What kind of a creature is man that he may be tortured, tormented, and killed in a scheme to exploit his labor?

The question must be asked because that's what income taxes do, they terrorize, torment, and kill people in a benighted scheme to exploit human labor. The question must be asked with urgency because the feds are about to kill Ed and Elaine Brown in their effort to exploit the Brown's labor.

Consider the following analogy. In my home state of Maine, where logging is a major industry, a few people still use horses to work in the woods. When a logger uses a horse to twitch timber from the forest out to a wood yard, he's exploiting the horse's labor, there wouldn't be anything wrong with that - a horse is that kind of creature. However, if the horse displeased the logger in some way, and if the logger deliberately killed the horse while exploiting its labor - if he beat it to death with a whip - that would be a crime. In Maine it would be aggravated cruelty to animals, a felony. But if the feds kill Ed and Elaine Brown in their effort to exploit the Brown's labor, there will be no crime - none whatsoever.

How come?

If you terrorize, torment, and kill a horse while exploiting its labor, it's a crime. Why, then, is it not a crime to terrorize, torment, and kill a man while exploiting his labor?

It defies logic. A logger who killed a horse while attempting to exploit its labor would face a serious charge, but a federal agent who kills a human being while attempting to exploit human labor would face no charges at all. Not even a misdemeanor. In fact, if Ruby Ridge and Waco are indicative, he'd get a medal and a pay raise.

Imagine the details for a moment. A man is working a horse in the forest. For some reason he gets upset with the animal. He then begins to savagely beat the horse with a whip, maiming it. Still enraged, the logger shoots and kills the terrorized beast.

That's considered a crime in every state in the union. And it should be. None of God's living, breathing, feeling creatures should be treated like that so someone may benefit from their sweat and toil. Well, Ed and Elaine Brown are two of God's living, breathing, felling creatures. Yet, federal agents in their scheme to exploit their sweat and toil have plagued the Browns for months. They have tormented them with a sham trial and with the prospect that they will lose their freedom forever. Ed and Elaine Brown face the haunting reality that, like Irwin Schiff, they will receive what's tantamount to a life sentence and die in prison. Tell me that prospect isn't terror and its infliction won't be torment.

And the brutality began months before the Brown's courtroom tribulations. On December 2, 2004 some 30 armed federal agents, including a four-member sniper team, backed up by the local and state police, stormed into Ed and Elaine Brown's home, thus perpetrating a daunting act of terror. Now, the most savage aspect of the whole ordeal is so imminent, that before these words reach the public, the Browns could be dead - and not to collect a legitimate levy; but to impose upon free men a modern form of servitude that armed overseers call a tax.

Neither do I casually call federal tax collectors overseers. Tax collector collect taxes, overseers violently and lethally exploit the labor of individuals. Let me repeat: Tax collectors collect taxes, overseers violently and lethally exploit the labor of individuals.

To directly tax our labor is to directly exploit our labor. Thus, the most insincere argument regarding IRS agents is that they don't violently and lethally exploit our labor; they undeniably do. By this definition they are overseers. And by this definition the armed agents who raided the Brown's home in December 2004, those who now dragoon the couple, threatening their lives, are overseers.

Please don't miss the point: With implements of coercion - such as whips, chains, prison keys, guns, and the like, backed up by the power to kill - overseers coerce the solitary laborer, watching his every productive move from sunrise to sunset without end. Thus, when collecting a so-called tax on our labor, agents from the federal government who coercively watch our every productive move from sunrise to sunset - backed by the power to kill - are once again defined as overseers. To call them tax collectors imperils the nation.

By whatever name they are called, overseers are like a dead canary in a mine, and freedom-loving people must grasp their significance before it's too late. Overseers represent an economic system in which human suffering and human death are casually accepted byproducts of exploiting human labor. Those who toil cannot be fully human; they cannot be truly free. It's impossible. Historically, people have known this.

It's incredible. I'm talking about brutal central governments that accepts human suffering and human death as part of a nationwide scheme to exploit the toiling masses, and I'm talking about the United States of America; not Communist Cuba or Red China, but America. That's inconceivable, but yet it's true.

Neither do I casually call what's happening to Ed and Elaine Brown servitude. After all, no worker can be free if he toils in the presence of overseers; especially legions of them. And why doesn't being killed for your labor make you a slave? What horror other than death - even in the form of a threat - must exist for servitude to exist? Does your master really need the power to buy and sell you? Or does he merely need the right to kill you for your labor, even though that right lies at the end of a long, tortuous process of Kangaroo law and is seldom used?

Historically, a worker who was free from death or crushing punishment only if he prostituted his labor to a violent oppressor was a slave. Due to income taxes, American workers are free from death and crushing punishment only if we prostitute our labor to one of the most violent oppressors in American history, the IRS. Why, then, are we not slaves?

Certainly, we are not chattel slaves - we are wage slaves.

Neither do I casually use the term wage slavery. It's not merely a cute phrase that allows frustrated people to blow off steam. Look at what's happening to Ed Brown and his wife Elaine and you will see the brutal force and deadly might of wage slavery. It's an extremely real and exceptionally potent form of human bondage. It will destroy a worker economically. It will take his liberty. It will take his life. That's real servitude, and it's as cute as an unseen cancer.

But whatever word you use to describe the condition under which we suffer all of our productive lives, from sunrise to sunset without end, the word freedom won't do. In fact, the question should be so much, "Is this slavery?" Even though it is. The question should be, "Is this freedom?" It should be, "Is this the proper role of government?"

So, then, is what we have freedom?

Any worker who's managed with a chain is a slave. I repeat: Any worker who's managed with a chain is a slave. And if you want to see our chains, go to a federal prison. Or better yet, do the patriotic thing. Refuse to be a slave - refuse to pay your taxes. When you do, after a long, torturous process of Kangaroo law, the chains by which you are managed will be placed around your wrists and ankles. You will then be dragged off to a prison and become a worker managed by men with guns - just like Irwin Schiff and countless others.

How can that be freedom? Why isn't that servitude? Why doesn't being a worker who's placed in chains, imprisoned and managed by men with guns make you a slave? What other torment must exist for slavery to exist?

Just because your condition isn't exactly like slaves in the Old South - just because the state doesn't have the right to buy or sell you, doesn't mean you have all the rights to which you're naturally entitled by you Creator. It doesn't mean that being our overseer, as defined earlier, is the proper role of government.

One difference between chattel slavery and the servitude we suffer is that our masters in Washington, D.C. can't sell us down the river, as sometimes happened in the Antebellum South. No, they can't sell us down the river - but they can send us up the river, like they want to do to Ed and Elaine Brown, as they've done to Irwin Schiff and countless others. They can send us up the river to federal prisons, like the ones at Leavenworth, Kansas; Marion, Illinois; and Florence, Colorado.

At Florence, Colorado, one segregation unit has soundproof cells in which prisoners are confined for twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week, year after year after year, from sunrise to sunset without end. It's hell on earth.

Tell me, if in a scheme to exploit your labor you're suffering Hell on earth in solitary confinement, why are you not a slave? If you're a worker - not a murderer, a rapist, or a terrorist, but a worker - who's confined twenty-three house a day in a soundproof cell, year after year after year, what other kind of agonizing torment must exist for slavery to exist? Must you really feel your master's lash upon your back?

Or you you're a worker who can be sent up the river to a more conventional prison - to exploit your labor in particular and the labor of millions of others in general - why doesn't that produce servitude?

In the Old South, people sent down the river - to exploit their labor in particular and the labor of millions of others in general - were separated from their spouses and children; that was part of the punishment, part of the threat - if you did not prostitute your labor to a violent oppressor, the violent oppressor would tear apart your family.

Today, people sent up the river - to exploit their labor in particular and the labor of millions of others in general - are separated from their spouses and children; that's part of the threat, part of the punishment - if you don't prostitute your labor to the IRS, the IRS will tear apart your family. As they tried to do to Ed Brown, whose wife was ordered by her overseer - disguised as a federal judge - to have no physical contact with her husband. After a few weeks of being apart, Elaine Brown bravely returned to her husband's side and put her family back together, which the feds now promise to destroy through lethal violence.

Tell me, if in a scheme to exploit your labor, someone can tear apart your family, why isn't that servitude, regardless of the scheme? More to the point, how can that be freedom? How can a person threatened in such a way be said to enjoy all the rights to which he is naturally entitled? How can destroying families be the proper role of government?

I've made a distinction between tax collectors and overseers. Allow me to carry that a little further. Let me distinguish between a place of punishment and detention set aside for murderers and a place for punishment and detention set aside to aid the state in its exploitation of the toiling masses - one terrorized worker at a time.

A place of punishment and detention set aside for murderers is a prison. A place of punishment and detention set aside for workers is a gulag.

If anyone thinks the term "gulag" is too strong, fine. But the linguistic problem remains. On one hand, you have a place for punishment and detention that has been set aside to deal with murderers. On the other hand, you have a place for punishment and detention that has been set aside to control workers. There's a tremendous difference in that, and, like a dead canary in a mine, it shouldn't be ignored. It should be acknowledged. It should be verbalized. To call a gulag a prison imperils the nation.

Consequently, a murderer who's confined in a soundproof cell for twenty-three hours a day is in a prison. But a worker who's confined in a soundproof cell for twenty-three hours a day is in a gulag. And what American worthy of the name will declare that building and maintaining places of punishment and detention to control the toiling masses - one terrified worker at a time - is the proper role of government? It isn't. It's not the freedom to which we are naturally entitled by our Creator. How can a worker be free if he toils in the shadow of a gulag?

Let me again compare the exploitation of animal and human labor.

I believe most Americans will agree that our nation must not be a place where the vicious death of an animal is an acceptable part of exploiting animal labor, the violation of that precept being a crime. Why, then, can't we agree that our nation must be a place where the vicious death of a person is an acceptable part of exploiting human labor? Why can't we agree that violating that precept is a crime? Am I missing some complex philosophical construct that prohibits lethal brutality from being used against nonhuman sources of labor but allows it against human sources of labor? What kind of creature does that make man?

Let us also examine our reaction to these two different fatal scenarios, the former being hypothetical while the plight of Ed and Elaine Brown is all too real.

If animal lovers received news of a logger who abused a work horse as I've described, there would be a national outcry. The news media would be in a frenzy. Animal rights activists would scream that justice could not exist until the brutal logger was arrested, tried, convicted, and punished. And if that cold-hearted woodman threatened another horse, then from across the nation untold numbers of people would arise, throngs would begin to converge on the scene of impending slaughter, vowing to defend that animal to the death.

Tell me America, if you would do that for an animal, why not do as much for a human being? Why not arise en mass and converge on Plainfield, New Hampshire, vowing to defend Ed and Elaine Brown to the death? If horses were being brutalized and killed in Plainfield, New Hampshire to exploit their labor, and no one spoke up or no one came, it would speak volumes about the nation's soul. Well, Ed and Elaine Brown are being brutalized - and one day they will be killed in the federal government's scheme to exploit their labor - and you have not said a word, you have not come. Where is your soul?

Neither do I casually say the following - Ed and Elaine Brown will not be the last patriots to take the stand they have taken, which is - Live Free or Die. Others will step forward because the federal courts are utterly corrupt. Look at what happened to Irwin Schiff. Mr. Schiff committed no crime - for which he received a mock trial and a life sentence. And if in a scheme to exploit your labor, you lose your freedom for the rest of your life, as Mr. Schiff did, why are you not a slave? What other kind of excruciating pain must you suffer before servitude exists?

Others will be forced to take the stand the Browns have been forced to take because the federal government's murder of Gordon Kahl, their badgering Alex Council to suicide, the fate of Irwin Schiff, the on-going siege in New Hampshire have taught patriots a painful lesson - federal judges ignore both the Constitution and the law, there will stubbornly defy reason; pushed into a corner by the right, there will nonetheless defend to the bitter end their peculiar institution of violently and lethally exploiting our labor, which they piously call a tax. Thus, there is no recourse in the courts.

Adding to our dilemma is the fact that the national press is filled with whores, liars, lost souls, and a few shipwrecked seekers of truth - some like Robinson Crusoe, some like Gillian. But as a group, they keep the masses snoring in a drooling servitude.

Thus, there is no refuge except God and the gun for a man who would not live as a slave - which is what we do when we refuse to be workers managed by chains and men with guns; which is what we do when we refuse to toil in the presence of overseers and gulags.

Ultimately, there is no hope for any of us unless we go to Plainfield, New Hampshire and defend Ed and Elaine Brown. The Brown's fate is our fate. As the Browns go, so goes our freedom. You need not stay for the duration, but for a month, a week, or a day. It will speak volumes about your soul. It will send a message to the elected aristocracy in Washington, D.C. a message; that the people are armed and possess the spirit of resistance.

And if you cannot stand with the Browns, why not stand up where you are? Why not raise your voice in protest? Why not tell our de facto masters that any free man or free woman who is killed in a scheme to exploit human labor has been murdered; those who do the killing are murderers; that justice will not exist until all such murderers are arrested, tried, convicted, and punished for their crimes - including execution, where warranted.

Why not stand up before the Founding Mothers and the Founding Fathers - and when asked the question: What kind of creature is a man that he may be terrorized, tormented, and killed in a scheme to exploit his labor, why not get in the overseer's face and with clenched teeth say - Man is not that kind of creature - no more so that a horse.

Glenn David.