Could The IRS Become America's Gestapo?

By Ron Ewart
August 27, 2014
NewsWithViews.com

“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.” ~ James Madison

The other night we were watching the 1960-war movie “The Mountain Road” with James Stewart. It took place in China during World War II when the Japanese were advancing throughout the mainland of China. It wasStewart’s job to lead a small group of demolition experts to blow up an airport the U. S. was abandoning and then blow up bridges, ammunition dumps and sections of the mountain road to blunt the Japanese advancement. This would allow thousands of refugees to escape into the mountains and give time for the Chinese to build opposition forces.

During the trek over the mountains, Stewart and his men encountered tens of thousands of desperate, starving and fleeing Chinese refugees. They also encountered Chinese Army deserters who were hungry and dangerous. In a moment of compassion one of Stewart’s men took some cans of fruit to a crowd of refugees who then promptly trampled him to death to get to the food.

Towards the end of the movie one of the team’s trucks was stolen and the driver and passenger killed by Chinese Army deserters. Stewart in a fit of rage, vowed revenge and returned to where the deserters were drinking in a local pub, celebrating their prize. He used all of the firepower and explosives he had in the team’s possessions to wipe out the deserters. In the process he killed a bunch of innocent Chinese peasants.

After Stewart regained his senses, he realized he had overreacted and felt a sense of remorse. He tried to explain to the widow that had accompanied the team on the mission, that he did it because he had the “power” and the power he had was all consuming. He was unable to resist its hold on him.

And so it is with all men (and women) with power over people and the weapons to enforce that power. The temptation to use that power and those weapons without restraint becomes overwhelming and inevitable.

When Hitler was declared Chancellor of Germany in 1933, it was decided that he had to have a national police force that would ferret out treachery and treason against the Third Reich. That police force, under the command of Heinrick Himmler, was called the Gestapo. The Gestapo was under no judicial review or restraint whatsoever and was free to arrest, try, imprison and execute anyone, at any time, or just make someone disappear.

Even though the Gestapo was not a large force relative to the population, it instilled so much fear into the people that every German citizen thought there was a Gestapo agent behind every telephone pole. The Gestapo was ruthless in their tactics. Their power was absolute and fully sanctioned by Hitler and Himmler. The people were so intimidated they would turn in anyone in the hopes of getting on the good side of the Gestapo whether the person they turned in had done anything or not. The Gestapo encouraged this behavior and sometimes rewarded the snitchers.

In contrast today, Americans have become just like Germans during World War II, turning in their neighbor to the local authorities if they think their neighbor has done something wrong, or if they had a gripe with their neighbor. Every week we get one or more calls or e-mails from landowners who tell the story of their neighbor using alleged infractions of land use ordinances to turn them into the city or county authorities ….. anonymous of course. The more laws government passes the more citizens will turn into petty snitches for the government ….. just like the Germans did with the Gestapo.

Which brings us to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The power of the IRS to take money from you in the form of taxes has become almost absolute. There is still judicial review of their actions but judicial review is handled essentially by IRS officers, IRS attorneys and IRS courts ….. a stacked deck at best.

The arrogance the IRS and its officers have shown to congressional review, reflects the power the IRS believes it has over the people and even over the Congress. The mindset of its officers and employees, like Lois Lerner and several of its commissioners, demonstrate that it is a power unto itself, answerable to no one. Delays, obfuscation and deletion or hiding of evidence while under congressional scrutiny happen with regularity and impunity. The questions regarding their partiality to a particular political party and their ties to the current president grow by the day. Their power to destroy citizens by just picking up the phone and subjecting an otherwise lawful taxpayer to harassment and intimidation by multiple federal government agencies, apparently knows no bounds. And now the IRS controls your health care.

The Department of Justice, under the command of Henreich Holder, shows more interest in a local shooting of a black man, than he does to the growing and dangerous power of the IRS. Heir Holder will assign 40 FBI agents to scour the neighborhoods of Ferguson and St. Louis to find some black man that will unequivocally state that he saw the police officer shoot Michael Brown in cold blood who had his hands up in an act of surrender. But Heir Holder will only assign one heavy duty Obama donor to investigate the IRS. An alleged racial incident in the heartland has a greater priority in Heir Holder’s mind than reining in an out-of-control, rogue government agency.

read more at NWV’s:

http://www.newswithviews.com/Ewart/ron167.htm