I’ve been drinking since 6 this morning. You know why: it’s Tax Day. It’s the Fourth of July for Democrats. But for Americans who work it’s terrible. The greatest shame of all is that it was actually Republicans who gave us the income tax. We will analyze why and how that happened. Then, what ever happened to libertarianism? We’ll discuss with former Marine, foreign currency trader, and libertarian broadcaster extraordinaire Jason Stapleton.
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That could describe most days, but it's especially true of today, because today is tax day.
Today is one of the worst days in America.
It's also known as the 4th of July for Democrats, but for Americans who work and hold a job, it's a very terrible day.
President Trump acknowledged this in an op-ed.
He wrote, Tuesday is a day hard-working Americans may dread more than any other.
Tax day.
But that's not really why I've been drinking.
That's not why I'm so upset.
I hate shelling out my money to the federal government, but the great shame of tax day.
I don't even know if I can say it.
Republicans gave us the income tax.
I know.
It pains me as much as it pains you.
It's really awful.
We will go through the history of that.
We will analyze why and how it was actually Republicans twice who gave us the income tax.
Then, speaking of the government taking all of our hard-earned money, whatever happened to libertarianism?
Whatever happened to the libertarian moment that we were all promised?
We will talk with libertarian broadcaster extraordinaire, former marine and foreign currency trader Jason Stapleton of the Jason Stapleton Program, and explain what happened and why the federal government is so big and bloated and stealing all of our money.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
How do you like the new digs?
This is kind of a plus for Tax Day.
I am in Mobile, Alabama.
I'm going to be speaking tonight at the Alabama Policy Institute.
And this is really good for Tax Day.
It's like a safe space for conservatives.
I just shelled out a bunch of money to the federal government.
A bunch of blank book money to the federal government.
Very frustrating.
And the Trump tax cuts haven't kicked in yet.
So it was more money than I wish we could have done.
I guess it's not so bad because I didn't do anything to make it.
But Nevertheless, I'll be in a safe space tonight with conservatives.
We can lament together.
If you happen to be in Mobile, Alabama, come on by the Alabama Policy Institute, and we will be discussing conservatism yesterday, today, and in the future.
And then I will be at Trump University on Thursday in Philadelphia.
So if you're in the neighborhood, come on by.
That speech will be on the topic, reasons to vote for Trump.
It should be very good, especially since it looks like he's brought peace to the Korean Peninsula.
That's also in the news.
Maybe if we have a little time at the end of today, we'll be able to get to that.
How after 70 years, Donald Trump, President Covfefe is finally the guy to bring peace to Korea.
Not Eisenhower, not Kennedy, not Reagan.
Nope.
Just Donald J. Trump.
That is a beautiful thing.
So it is tax day.
To celebrate Tax Day and also to give me an opportunity to just keep drinking, we will discuss whatever happened to libertarianism.
You know, in 2016, everybody in the media, they told us this is the libertarian moment.
And conservatives talk a good game on this.
They say, this is the libertarian moment.
We're going to We want small government and no spending and to keep to ourselves and put America first.
Rand Paul was supposed to be the great candidate.
Of course, he was practically the first one out.
We will discuss with Jason Stapleton.
I spoke with him last week.
Here he is.
Jason, thank you for being here.
Thank you so very much for having me on the show.
I appreciate it.
So, you're the new voice for Liberty in America, host of the Jason Stapleton program.
In 2016 and 2015, All I could read in Newsweek, the New York Times, all the mainstream media, they said this is the libertarian moment and it was going to be Rand Paul was going to run away with the nomination and this was finally the moment after years of Ron Paul, we're going to get a libertarian candidate.
What happened to the libertarian moment?
That is a very, very good question.
It's relatively easy to answer.
I think that you had two of the most polarizing and really, if you want to be honest with it, terrible candidates for president of the United States, because neither one of them were really very well liked.
And what you ended up having was everyone's looking to third parties.
And this was...
The Libertarian Party's been around for 40 years, and they've been trying for a long time to figure out how they're going to gain market share, I guess, in the political movement.
And this was a really key opportunity for them to kind of sell libertarianism as a viable third-party option.
The problem is they picked the wrong candidates.
So Rand Paul really was never going to be the candidate for the Republican Party.
And so that was never going to happen.
So then you turn to the Libertarian Party and say, okay, who are they going to put up?
Well, then they end up putting up what is really one of the craziest guys that they could possibly pick, who didn't really represent libertarianism well, and then they got for his vice presidential candidate, Bill Weld, who was really just a Republican who decided he wanted to stay in politics, and so he ran as a libertarian.
And Bill Weld, he wasn't even much of a libertarian Republican.
No, he's not a libertarian at all.
This is one of the things that really offends, I guess offends those of us who really do hold these principles of, you know, we shouldn't hurt people and we shouldn't take their stuff, which is at its core what libertarianism believes.
He did not represent the message because he wasn't a libertarian.
And so that was the problem.
We had a chance, I think, in 2016 to really show what libertarianism was to people, and instead we decided to put up a safe candidate, and we ended up scoring, what, 3% of the vote.
It was embarrassing.
Right.
Not a big fan of Gary Johnson's performance as the libertarian nominee.
No, he's a terrible candidate.
I don't know the man personally.
He may be a very nice guy, but in terms of his candidacy, it was an abject failure.
So, if you had it to do over again, if the Libertarians had it to do over again, to show what the Libertarian Party and the Libertarian movement offers to the country, how would you describe it, and how would you describe the difference between a Libertarian and a Conservative, some other kind of Conservative?
Yeah, I think at its core, libertarians believe, as I said before, that we shouldn't hurt people and we shouldn't take their stuff.
And I think most people will align themselves with that if you talk to them.
One of the things that I find, whether I'm talking with a very conservative person or whether I'm talking with a progressive person, there are principles of the libertarian ideology and idea that they can agree with.
So I talk about it on my show in terms of five basic principles.
They are limited government, individualism, peace, tolerance, and free markets.
Now, what I believe and what libertarians tend to believe is that when government is small, when we value and respect other people, when we focus on peace rather than violence, and we focus on free markets where people can pursue their own self-interest and succeed or fail on their own merit, that this produces more wealth and more opportunity for more people than any other system ever devised by man.
Doesn't necessarily mean it's the best system.
It's just the best one we've found so far.
And so, Talking about the message, the way Gary Johnson and Bill Weld talked about it was, oh, we're kind of a mix.
We're part conservative and part progressive, and the truth is that's not at all the case.
What we believe is a very principled position that says you own your body, you own the byproduct of your labor, And therefore, government, if it has a role to play, their job is to protect life, liberty, and property, and nothing more.
So it's a very minimalist form of government that would exist under libertarianism that would really allow people to pursue their own self-interest without all of the things that everybody hates about government.
You know, I've never heard it articulated that way, but that is such a good point that libertarians say you own your body.
And I think why the religious right and more traditionalist conservatives probably break on that is they say you don't own your body.
Your body is owned by God and you owe something to him.
You don't have the right to kill yourself.
You don't have the right to do all of those sorts of things.
Does this mean, though, if it's don't hurt people and don't take their stuff, does this mean that libertarians have to be pacifists?
No, not at all.
In fact, I'm not a pacifist.
Believing in peace and advocating for peace is not the same thing as advocating for nonviolence.
There are certainly times when it's time to be violent.
There are certainly times when war is appropriate.
What we believe is, as libertarians, is that you shouldn't aggress against someone, which means we shouldn't try to impose our will on others.
And so, in the case that someone would come to us and try and take our life, our property, then we have a right to defend ourselves against that, and we should do that with savage disregard for the other's condition.
But I think that what we see right now in terms of foreign policy in America today is, if I can...
The only way I know how to explain it is empire building.
We're not really building empires, but we are expanding the reach of American power through military action.
And this is something that libertarians disagree with just simply because we're essentially imposing our will on others through the threat of violence.
And that's the difference between pacifism and what libertarians call nonviolence.
That's well stated.
And I should point out for anyone who doesn't know, you did serve in the Marine Corps.
You're certainly not a pacifist.
And now, does this at any point break down?
So it's easy to say, I think everybody would basically agree with what you've said, until one looks around this...
Frequently very awful political scene in the world and sees some terrible country aggressing against another country or brutalizing its own people or dropping chemical bombs on its own people or whatever.
And we think, well, we could go in there and stop those tyrants and those brutal dictators from doing that.
Is there a moral obligation to help when we can in a humanitarian way, even if it's not as a matter of self-defense?
That's a really good question.
My personal opinion is that there is a moral obligation to help, but that is the individual's responsibility to do.
What a libertarian would believe is that, okay, one of the things I believe about the military is that military guys are kind of unique.
Because what they are essentially saying is, I will give up my freedom.
I will give up my liberty.
Because when you sign a military contract, you are basically agreeing to go and do whatever the government says.
You are selling yourself to the government for a period of time.
And what I have always believed about that is, that is a noble virtue to say, I'm willing to do that.
I will turn over my liberty and I will go so that when the time arises, when American liberty and freedom is threatened, I will go and I will fight.
I will go and I will fight so that you don't have to.
I think that's admirable.
What I believe our responsibility as American citizens are is to ensure that we never ask them to do that unless it is absolutely necessary to protect American liberty, not American interest.
Those are two different things.
The government will always find an interest where it wants to exert its authority.
What we're talking about is liberty.
And if American liberty isn't threatened, then we have no responsibility, we have no right to send others who have raised their hand to volunteer to go and fight and die for someone else.
And again, I'm sorry, go on.
I was going to say, just on the flip side, to your question more specifically about the moral obligation we have.
If you really believe, and this is something I've said to Mark Levin, that I have said to John McCain and to Lindsey Graham.
I said, listen, if you want to go fight, if you believe we need to go over there, if you believe that we need to fight, that we have a moral obligation to be there, then I will pay for your plane ticket and I will buy you a rifle and you can go over there.
Because if you really believe that we have a moral obligation, then stand up and go.
I know that if I really believed that my liberty was threatened and my children risked living under the heel of tyranny's boot, I would stand up and go fight.
And so if I'm not there, it means I don't think it's important enough to put my own life on the line, then I'm not going to ask somebody else to do it for me.
And I think most people would agree with that, too.
But what about, again, in the hard case where, say, you look at a failed state like Libya or you look at a failed state like Iraq or Syria at this point, and you say, well...
There are interests that are threatened.
American liberty today may not explicitly be threatened, even though, as we learned the hard way, those people can now make it across the ocean and threaten our liberty and our safety.
But you say, if we allow that place to fail...
The worst people in the region are going to go in, they're going to train, they're going to brutalize people, and they're going to prepare to come attack us either in Europe or in the United States.
Is there then some strategic interest in preventing that or preempting that, or is that still absolutely not?
No, another very good question, and I would respond like this.
I would say potentially.
The first thing I would ask you is, why do we have failed states in Libya and Iraq?
Well, one could argue correctly that the reason we have those failed states is because of American foreign policy.
We ousted both of those dictators, and we created the mess that's now over there.
And I don't think anybody can look at the situation in America, the threat to terrorism today, and say we are a lot safer today than we were prior to 9-11.
In fact, all of our efforts, all of our attempts to stabilize, to control, to oust foreign dictators and put in people that would be more sympathetic to the principles of democracy and liberty that we want to promote, every effort has led to a greater destabilization of the region and more violence.
And what I have said on my show repeatedly is I don't know what the right decision is, but I know the wrong decision is to continue the same course of action that we've been on for the past, whatever, 15 years.
And so what I have said is let's try something radically different.
Let's try leaving.
Let's try not creating any more of a mess than we've already created.
And yes, we are walking away from a gigantic mess and there will no doubt be vacuums that are created that must be filled.
And my suggestion, the only point that I make is we are not solving the problem or fixing it with our current foreign policy interests.
So let's try something different that maybe will get us a better result.
If I'm wrong, then we can try something different.
But I'm just saying the violence, the regime change, the control hasn't helped.
In fact, it's made the situation worse.
It's a good point to make.
It is the longest war, practically the longest war we've ever fought.
The war on terror writ large, the war in Afghanistan.
There are some positive things that have come out of it that can't quite be accounted for.
The invasion of Iraq did leave to the denuclearization of Libya, which led to the decolonization.
The Gaddafi-ization of Libya, which might not have been a good thing, but it was good when they got rid of their nuclear program.
It's a good point.
We've been in the region for a while.
Wars have been mismanaged.
Every single day of Barack Obama's presidency was a day of war.
They told me if I voted for John McCain, we'd get more war in the Middle East, and they were right.
I voted for John McCain and we got more war in the Middle East.
Right, right.
So, do you think that there's an appetite among the American people for, I won't call it isolation, but for pulling back?
Donald Trump campaigned in his words and said, we need to stop having these wars in the Middle East.
He also said, I'm going to destroy ISIS and go in and kill them.
Which guy won?
Which guy is governing?
And who did the American people elect?
Well, I, my gut feeling tells me, and when you talk about the American people, you're really talking about, I mean, I used to live in Kansas, and in Kansas is very conservative, and as I now live in LA, which is very progressive, and it's almost like being in a completely different country.
Because you have very different opinions as a collective based on where you live.
And so I think if I've got a pulse on the American people in general, I think everybody has been touched by this war in some way.
They all know somebody who's gone or somebody who's been there.
I think there is no appetite to send our men and women to fight and die when we don't understand what we're doing there, how we win and what that looks like and what we're trying to accomplish.
And whether you look at Iraq or Afghanistan or what we're trying to do in Syria, I mean, there really isn't a clear plan on what it is we want to accomplish.
All we're doing is spending blood and coin.
I think that the American people are willing to stand up and defend liberty, and they may be willing to even engage in things that I, as a libertarian, wouldn't agree with in terms of how we handle our foreign policy if they understand what it is we're trying to get done.
The biggest problem with foreign policy today, as it deals with our wars, is that there isn't any clear idea of what victory looks like and what we're going to do and how we're going to win.
I think Trump ran on this idea that we ought to pull people out of Iraq, that it was a mess over there.
And I think now that he's in power, the military-industrial complex and the powerful...
State Department bureaucracy.
Absolutely.
Well, even the Lockheed Martins and the people who have a vested interest in making sure that wars continue, they spend a lot of money in Washington.
And it's very, very hard...
To get around that sort of lobbying.
And so I think at the end of the day, he's become subjected to the same pressures that Obama and Bush before him were subjected to.
Do you think, from the libertarian perspective, is he exceeding your expectations?
I had very low expectations when he was elected, so he certainly exceeded mine.
I've been all in for the covfefe.
I've been pleasantly surprised.
Do you think that he is advancing a liberty agenda, not doing anything, or damaging it?
Yes and no.
I think on some things he's done well.
I think he's reduced regulation.
I like that.
Tax decreases.
I like that.
I don't like the fact that he's adding to the deficits.
I absolutely abhor his foreign policy and also his trade policy.
I think those are very, very damaging to America long-term.
So I think it's a mixed bag.
See, I'm not left or right.
I don't play politics.
I believe in five principles of liberty, and whoever supports and advocates those, I'll support.
And if you support them in one area and not another, then you'll get my support in the area where you support them.
I am about principle, not party.
And so Trump has been a mixed bag as that goes.
This is my problem with the libertarian movement, because I like so much of it.
I agree with so much of it.
But I'm always reminded of the Lord Acton quote, which I'm going to butcher, but it's something to the effect of.
Friends of Liberty have always been few, and they've achieved their goals when they've achieved them by associating with auxiliaries whose own goals differ from the Friends of Liberty.
And there's a risk involved with this, there's a moral risk, but we do it anyway, even though it could blow up in our face and really damage our integrity or our view of ourselves.
Does the libertarian movement, is the path forward for the freedom movement or the libertarian movement to form its own party, have a viable third party, get 2% of the vote, 3%, 5%, try to grow it that way, or is the goal to work within one of the two major parties and move the Republican Party more in its own direction?
Absolutely.
Yes.
I have a real problem.
If anybody who's listened to my show knows I absolutely have disdain for the Libertarian Party.
I think they've done a terrible job of advocating the principles that we believe in.
They've done an even worse job of getting people elected and putting them in positions of authority where we might be able to effect some change.
On that same token, it's very, very difficult to get liberty-minded people, and libertarians specifically, elected under the GOP because the GOP simply funds the candidates that they want.
It makes it very difficult for guys.
Austin Peterson, for example, is a libertarian who's now running as a Republican in Missouri against Claire McCaskill.
I think he'd be a great choice.
He's an advocate for liberty.
I know him personally.
But he's going up against a GOP frontrunner who's raised $10 million.
And it's very, very difficult for people to fight that.
So I think if we want libertarianism and these ideas that I've been talking about to ever gain traction, We have to put some more people in power one way or another.
The guys like Rand Paul, Justin Amash, you know, Thomas Massey, I mean, those guys need help in Washington.
And we cannot mount a defense against entrenched Republicans and Democrats until we have more guys like that.
I always wonder with the libertarian movement, which has, you know, vacillated in some ways its left wing in some ways, and for certain periods it leans more right and they vote more Republican or with conservatives.
I wonder if people ask, well, how come you don't just vote on issues?
How come you don't just vote on the candidate?
Are the current parties coherent?
I wonder if it does make sense if there's a kind of logical conclusion that comes from saying, okay, I believe in God, I therefore support more freedom, but I support this kind of strength, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And for the left, you know, I don't really know what they support, like pot and high taxes or whatever.
I don't know what they do.
But if there's a kind of natural, logical conclusion to those.
And does the libertarian movement find itself outside of that or too heterodox?
Will it be forced to go one way or the other?
No, I don't.
One of the things I love about libertarianism and the people who call themselves libertarians is that they really do have a moral foundation.
So, for example...
I believe that things like rape and murder and theft, I think those are morally wrong not because God says they're wrong, which is fine for Christians if that's the route they want to take, but I believe that they're morally wrong because they violate someone's property rights.
I think morality starts with property rights.
It starts with self-ownership.
Not to cut you off, but if that is the ground for it, if property rights are the inviolable moral standard, why?
Why is that?
Well, first of all, it just starts with self-ownership.
So when people talk about property rights, they think about my house or my car.
But really, we're talking about self-ownership and what is derived from that.
So if I own myself, Then clearly I would own the byproduct of my labor.
And if I own the byproduct of my labor, I ought to be able to do what I want to with either the...
So if I chop down a tree and I build a chair out of it, well that chair is now mine.
I've created it with my own hands and the byproduct of my labor.
Therefore, I ought to be able to sell it whoever I want to.
I ought to be able to set it on fire if I want to.
I ought to be able to do anything I want to with my own body and with my own property.
And so if there is another reason beyond just a religious conviction, then I would love to know it.
To me, a religious conviction is just a personal belief in faith, which is fine.
I have no issue with that at all.
I'm just saying from a moral perspective, the reason that these things are immoral is not because God says so, it's because it violates one's property rights.
I'm a little skeptical.
I think both of them are true.
I think it's immoral because it violates property rights, but I think that that's a good measure of morality because God says so.
And the reason I suggest this is that in no culture that did not have metaphysical thought and metaphysical concepts did an idea like libertarianism or liberty evolve.
The Western concept of liberty came out of a Christian culture, a culture that was informed and shaped by Christianity.
And I just wonder, since we're talking about metaphysical things, morality, freedom, justice, fairness, things that aren't tangible.
They're not material.
I didn't create them.
I didn't create a moral code.
I didn't create justice.
Because they're metaphysical and they're beyond what is physical, one must ask the question of what the metaphysical realm looks like.
Why are there ideas?
Why is there a morality?
Where does the morality exist?
If there's justice, who is the judge?
If there is a moral legislation, if there's a moral code, then who's the legislator?
Not to proselytize to you on my show, but I do wonder if that is a point of libertarianism that hasn't been followed to its logical beginnings, or if I'm just giving you that old-time religion.
No, no, no.
No, here's the beautiful thing about libertarianism is that libertarianism allows for any religion.
It allows for any, I mean, frankly, it allows for socialism, if you want to be honest.
I mean, if people want to collectively come together and pool their own resources, as long as it's being done voluntarily, a libertarian is not going to object to that.
It's the voluntary nature of the action that's important to a libertarian.
And so when we talk about religion, I have whatever religion one wants to believe in And if you want to go back to talking about it philosophically, I think that that's wonderful.
One of the things I harp on about libertarians is they spend a lot of time in the philosophical.
And I like to spend a lot of time in the reality of improving liberty and free markets and individualism, peace and tolerance over trying to discuss the philosophical.
But there's a place for that too.
So I think that Inside of libertarianism, you are going to find Christians, you are going to find atheists, you are going to find just a variety of people who believe in the idea that you own yourself and you own the byproduct of your labor, that you shouldn't hurt people and you shouldn't take their stuff.
And so if you can agree fundamentally with those principles, I think you're going to find a lot of friends inside the libertarian movement.
And I think, frankly, if you disagree with some of those principles, as I do, you'll still find a lot of common ground and friends in the libertarian movement.
I love your dichotomy here between being up in the ether and the philosophical realm all the time and the practical effect of this because we're talking about politics.
We had Austin on the show, Austin Peterson.
And I wouldn't call myself a libertarian exactly, but I'd vote for Austin in a heartbeat because I think he'd make the country better and I think he'd move it in a direction that is more open to liberty.
And I really encourage people in politics to avoid what Michael Oakeshott calls rationalism in politics and saying, well, who cares if it works in practice?
Does it work in theory?
You know, and really get down to the nuts and bolts.
And on the nuts and bolts of that, the last question.
I guess we can talk about politicians writ large.
Would you vote today for, say, Donald Trump's re-election or any of the Republicans in Congress or Senate for their re-election?
Are they doing more good than they're doing harm?
Or would you say, we've got to burn it down, we need a more liberty-minded candidate?
I don't believe in burning things down.
I've been, like I said, you know, I've been in a couple of different war zones and I think the idea that we would burn something to the ground just creates, people don't understand what that means.
I have a very simple philosophy on whether or not someone gets my vote.
I ask one question.
Do they believe in liberty as a primary political value?
And what I mean by that is just simply, do I believe that this candidate will constantly ask with every decision that he makes, does this move us closer towards liberty or further away?
Now, because in politics, it's a lot of horse trading.
So you're going to have to do some give and take.
I'm not so much of a purist that I won't accept that.
But what I want is I want at the end of the day, after the horse trading is done, I want to be closer towards tyranny and further towards statism or totalitarianism.
And if I have a candidate or someone who's in office who I believe really is trying to do that and who's asking that question, then they'll get my vote.
That's absolutely.
And it's funny that you bring up the example of the military because so many of my friends who have served or family members, they do trend a little bit libertarian.
And I think it might be because that is a real practical job and career.
You really see very quickly what's working and what's not working.
And yeah, it's a really great point.
Jason, we got to go.
I'm going to let you get back to your show.
But great to talk to you.
We're going to have to have you back.
The Jason Stapleton Program, a new voice for liberty in America.
Thanks so much.
You know, I was looking at my Twitter feed while we were playing that interview, and I had women writing into me, led by none other than our own Alicia Krauss, writing into me and saying, oh, Michael, Jason Stapleton, hubba hubba, thanks, baby.
Yeah, so, and I guess that's like the answer to the panel of deplorables, you know?
I bring on for months and months and months just the most beautiful women in the conservative movement, but basically just for my own edification.
And so that's okay, we'll throw you a little heartthrob libertarian man.
Every once in a while for the ladies who watch this show, we have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
But stick around because we're going to talk about the great shame, the great stain on the Republican Party.
The Republican Party is pretty good.
We've always stood for ordered liberty.
You know, we free the slaves who want more liberty these days.
We defend life.
It was a great party, except we invented the income tax.
I'll watch my language.
I've got salty language coming, bursting forth on this awful subject.
We'll explain that afterward.
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Many are called, few are chosen.
I'm up next in the conversation.
Remember, you can get my show on Facebook, on YouTube, on iTunes, on SoundCloud.
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You can get to dailywire.com.
Again, none of it matters for the shows.
No one actually wants to listen to the shows or watch Ben or Drew or the conversation.
That doesn't matter.
What matters is the leftist here's Tumblr.
Guys, Donald Trump is about to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula.
That is an absurd statement.
That is one of the funniest things to happen in politics.
In my lifetime, certainly.
When that happens, you are going to see storms rage.
Not because a nuclear weapon was dropped, you know, by the Sea of Japan or whatever.
It's because the leftist tears are going to flow freely in the United States.
You're going to need your vessel to protect yourself and your family.
They're radioactive.
The fallout is going to be horrific.
Make sure you go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back to complain about Republicans inventing income tax.
A true historical irony, a true, you know, Republicans now, what a great party we are.
It is the best party in American history.
And we took the traditions of the Federalists, and then every terrible thing that the Democrats did, we opposed.
The Republican Party was founded to free the slaves.
We opposed Jim Crow.
The Democrats wanted slavery.
They wanted Jim Crow.
We were the first party to support civil rights.
We defend the unborn.
Democrats want to slaughter all those babies.
We defend the unborn.
We just got, right at the very beginning, we got this thing wrong on the income tax.
And it wasn't like it just happened over time.
It wasn't like, oh, some new Republican, some weird, no.
It was the first Republican president issued the first income tax.
It was the Revenue Act of 1861.
It was the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.
He, uh, He did it because he had to raise $50 million in revenue to make the Democrats free all their slaves.
So he had to raise all that revenue, and they couldn't do it.
So they came up with a plan.
It would include a mixture of tariffs, property tax, and income tax.
Incomes over a certain threshold.
Not everybody was taxed, but some people are.
So that happened, and then we made the Democrats free all their slaves and reunited the country.
And so that was good.
That's fine.
Then it sort of went away for a while.
But we can't just let them off the hook that easily because this poison, this poisonous idea of taking all of America's hard-earned money, that kept seeping into the culture.
So in 1909, it wasn't some Democrat who proposed a constitutional amendment or a new income tax.
It was a Republican and a conservative Republican.
William Howard Taft proposed a 2% income tax on corporations and a constitutional amendment to collect individual income tax.
Now, we should say, it's not like people just didn't pay any taxes before.
It's that the taxes were not on their income, but they were hidden.
There were a lot of tariffs.
There were huge tariffs throughout all of our history, because you do have to fund the government.
Government does cost money to run.
So there was that, and then in 1909, there was some...
Question over what the most effective way to raise revenue was, because tariffs have a lot of downsides to them.
As we all know, I mean, that's why Donald Trump is threatening tariffs now.
I don't think we're going to see huge trade wars.
He's doing it because China is cheating, and they're not participating in free trade, and they're violating World Trade Organization treaties, and they're stealing our intellectual property, and they're illegally subsidizing their industries.
So there are some arguments for using this as leverage, but tariffs have a lot of tough externalities to them.
One of which is at this time when the income tax was being proposed, there was high inflation.
This was being blamed on tariffs rather than an income tax.
So anyway, enough excuses, enough defending the Republican Party.
It was William Howard Taft who first proposed this, the Republican president, the conservative Republican president.
Then the first senator to propose the income tax was a Republican senator, Norris Brown.
Okay, they propose this very modest income tax.
The highest marginal rate in the early days of this income tax was 6%.
Really, it was just 2% or 3%.
And then the very highest marginal rate was 6% of income.
Okay.
Within five years.
This is the problem.
Look, if someone wanted to take 2% of my income to fund the government, I can deal with that.
I can live, you know.
But what's so insidious is when the government gets its claws into your money, they just take and take and take.
You give them your little pinky and they take your whole hand.
So within five years of the income tax, federal income tax being instituted, the top marginal rate went from 6% to 77%.
That is a huge increase.
That is over an order of magnitude increase.
And a lot of this was to fund World War I. So they said, okay, look, we have this big war.
We raised revenue during the Civil War, so we're going to raise revenue again by raising taxes tremendously, soaking the rich to pay for this war.
Okay, that's fine.
Then after the war, the tax rate went back down.
The top marginal rate went back down to 24%.
Okay, that's fine.
24% is better than 77%.
But notice how we're bouncing around, right?
At first, it's this little modest tax, 1 or 2%.
Oh, 6% top rate.
Okay, 77%.
We're going to go back down to 24%.
Well, 24% is still four times higher than 6%.
That's still many multiples higher than the previous highest marginal rate just a few years earlier.
Okay, that's fine though, right?
But then FDR comes in.
And this is where we shift the blame to Democrats.
As Republicans, we were going to play nicely.
We were going to say, okay, look, I guess you need a little revenue here or there.
We're going to be responsible about this.
But the trouble with that is the Democrats seize on these things and they run with it way beyond any boundaries of reason.
So FDR comes in and he decides that he is going to raise the rates tremendously.
and not for the purposes of raising revenue.
Actually, I mean, there was part of that.
You had to raise revenue for the Second World War.
But FDR proposed a 100% tax on all incomes over $25,000.
That's just wealth confiscation at that point for fairness, for purposes of fairness and equality.
And the purposes of the income tax system right now are not to raise revenue.
We're not really fighting major wars.
We're not in the middle of a world war or something or a civil war that's bloodying up our entire country.
They're just doing it for purposes of fairness or equality.
And this is an amazing thing because apparently fairness is when you steal somebody else's money and then give it to a guy who isn't working as hard.
That's fairness.
You see, greed is when I want to keep the money that I have made.
But charity is when I steal somebody else's money and keep it for myself.
That's compassion.
That's charity.
So FDR changes the game entirely.
And it's no surprise that during FDR's time, we see tax revenue as a percentage of GDP shoot through the roof.
In the early days of the income tax, from basically the founding of the country, the 18th century, all the way up to the creation of the income tax here and there of Up until, I guess, about 1940, you see the revenue, the tax revenue, is something like 5% at most of total GDP. It's very low, between 3% sometimes, maybe up to 7%, depending on how you're measuring it.
Then FDR comes in.
In the 1940s, this thing explodes.
You get way, way higher rates.
Multiples higher rates.
And it's stayed there ever since.
You know, for the purposes of equality and fairness.
And you paid your taxes.
Well, I don't know.
My audience probably, you haven't paid your taxes.
But, like, you know, good people pay their taxes and everything.
And because they, you know, for one, they don't want to be targeted by the IRS. And two, you know, okay, I live in this country.
I have to pay my taxes.
And they just bleed us dry.
So, FDR obviously ruined all of this stuff.
During World War II, you know, the rates go really high.
FDR doesn't realize that at a certain point, if you're taxed 100% above a certain income, then you're just not going to work.
Why would I work?
If I can work 50 hours a week to make $25,000, or I can work 100 hours a week to make...
$50,000.
But I know that all of that extra wealth is going to be confiscated.
Why?
There's no incentive to work.
This is kind of the early stages of the Laffer curve.
This is kind of the early inklings of this that conservatives would run with for years and which formed a lot of the Reagan revolution.
But even JFK intuited this.
He said there are two tax rates at least where you have the exact same revenue to the government.
0% and 100%.
If the tax rate is 0%, the government's not going to get any of my money.
If the tax rate is 100%, I'm not going to work.
So we see a curve here, and there are always two tax rates at which you'll get the same revenue to the government.
So that didn't work.
FDR wanted this 100% income tax.
Congress said absolutely not.
That was so radical.
So then FDR decided to issue executive orders for wage controls.
It's created a lot of economic problems, but fine.
Then throughout the 1940s and 1950s, you had...
Forget about 6% just a few decades prior.
You now had the highest marginal tax rates, where 91%, 92%.
JFK comes in, he lowered the taxes and consolidated the rates to 77%, then to 70% starting in 1965.
Okay, I guess that's better than 91% or 92%, but do you see the...
The trend here, you go low rate, really high rate, lower but still higher than you started, higher, and you go all the way up.
Then Ronald Reagan came in, he lowered the rate to 50%, the top marginal tax rate.
That was from 1982 to 1986, but there were revenue problems, there was a lot of government spending, so Reagan ultimately undid a fair portion of those tax cuts.
Then the top rate was lowered to 38.5%.
Then the top rate was lowered to 28%.
George Bush, one, who famously promised, read my lips, no new taxes, immediately ran and raised taxes.
That was like the first thing he did.
That's probably why he didn't win re-election.
Then Clinton raised the top rate to 39.6%.
Bush, two, lowered it to 35%.
Then it went back up to 39.6%.
Trump lowered it very, very modestly to 37%.
That's the highest Marginal tax rate now in the Trump tax reform.
So we know that virtually all of the federal income taxes are paid by a very, very small percentage of people.
And most Americans pay net negative tax.
Now, there are all these hidden taxes, of course.
You pay sales tax, payroll tax.
They get you coming and going.
But most taxes are paid for by the rich, by a very small number of people.
This gets to just an important point on taxes, because obviously it's morally absurd to say that it's greedy for me to keep my own money, but it's charitable for me to steal somebody else's money, or for you to steal my money, or something like that.
But taxes, low taxes, are a good per se.
The Democrats always say, well, how are you going to pay for that tax cut?
I got two words for you, buddy, and they're not happy birthday when you say, how are you going to pay for that tax cut?
It's my money.
That's how I'm going to pay for it.
I'm going to keep it.
That's how I'm going to pay for my tax cut.
Well how are you going to pay for it?
As though they're entitled to my money.
They're not entitled to our money.
That is not true.
We contribute because we like our country I guess and really because we have to.
But lower taxes are good per se.
It is a reflection of freedom.
I work and so I make money and so the money is a symbol of my work, of my labor, of my liberty, of my lifetime, of my life that I spend.
If you're paying half of your money out in taxes, that means that for half the year you're a slave to the government.
That's not a good thing to be.
We don't like that tradition in America.
They try to accuse us, say, oh, you just agree you want to keep your money.
Yeah, I want to keep my life.
I want to keep my life.
The money is a symbol of my liberty.
The liberty is what I do during my life, man, and you're stealing my life.
It's a good per se, and Republicans should get off of this bean-counting, technocratic nonsense where we say, oh, we've got to pay for this.
Oh, it's going to be revenue neutral.
I don't want it to be revenue neutral.
I want tax reform to starve the beast.
I want revenue to be way down, and then I won't have to Cut government spending because it infringes on our liberty.
It is not good.
An important thing to keep in mind on tax day.
We forget this the rest of the year.
It's so, you know, initially with taxes, you would pay your congressman.
There wasn't this massive bureaucracy of the IRS, and the congress didn't really like that too much, you know, because then there's accountability there.
He said, I don't like paying all these taxes.
You can vote them out of office.
So now there are these huge bureaus.
It's very complicated.
It's so opaque.
It's going to get a little bit better with tax reform next year.
It's going to be simplified a little bit.
But it's just dreadful.
It's just a dreadful thing.
And we forget about it.
They take it right out of our paychecks.
Because they know that we don't like paying it.
So unless you're self-employed, it just comes out of your paycheck.
You think, oh, goody, goody, I got a tax return.
Oh, how nice, the government gave me a tax return.
The government didn't give you a tax return.
You just paid too much money throughout the year.
They just soaked you too much throughout the rest of the year.
Don't be fooled by that.
It's really awful.
And tax day is the day to remember the pain of paying taxes.
And we need people in our federal government.
We need people in our state and local governments who are aware that every dollar they take out of our pockets should be accounted for.
It should be for a good reason.
And if they can't give a good reason, vote the bums out.
Okay, happy tax day.
I've got to go back to drinking.
I've been working far too long today.
I paid so much money this morning.
I don't want to...
This is over.
I will be speaking tonight, however, at the Alabama Policy Institute.
So if you're in Mobile, come on by.
We're going to be talking about conservatism today.
And then if you're at Penn, I just got word that the Penn students who were hosting me, they just showed me some pictures.
I guess the lefties are ripping down the posters for my event on Thursday, Reasons to Vote for Donald Trump, and they're just leaving there.
So I guess, you know, those Penn students, they really don't want people to find out.
That I will be speaking at Penn.
So we shouldn't spread any more information about this, about this event that's going to take place on Thursday at 7 o'clock in John Huntsman Hall at the University of Pennsylvania.
Don't tell anybody.
Don't share that.
I don't want to upset the Penn students, so don't let anybody know that I will be speaking there on Thursday at 7 p.m.
in John Huntsman Hall on the topic reasons to vote for Trump.
Get your mailbag questions in.
I'll see you tomorrow.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.
