By Mwarang'etheLiving in a complex society, we often fail to perceive through study, critical thinking and reflection very simple truths that even a child can see. The fact is that, the basic principles that guide a simple society are not suspended when we enter into a complex society. Such ought to be self evident, but, alas, it is not. This lack of critical thinking and the subsequent error is evident in the so called "new constitution." To many supporters of the proposed new constitution, they like the so called "progressive human rights" contained in this draft as we are taught by brain dead intellectuals.
But, what do these brain dead intellectuals mean by progressive human rights? They mean the obligation of the "state" to provide or ensure good housing, good jobs, and decent pension for the old and such as we find in Article 43 of the proposed new constitution. In accordance with this doctrine, it is for the state to show that, it does not have enough resources. In other words, it must prove it has not robbed enough to give others. This is not unexpected because; socialists/collectivists/communists have no time for morals. All they care, or they think they care about is social justice. In their perverted way of thinking, as long as a measure is intended for good cause, then, all is fine. As such, they suspend their inquiry when they meet something they like. They fail to see that, the train of cause and effect in real life will go beyond where they suspended their inquiry.
Now, the best way to see through the serfdom of so called "progressive human rights" is to reduce the Kenyan State into the size of a location. For our purposes, we propose to take a fictitious nation called Bondo with a population of 1000 people and reduce to it in a fully fledged State. In Bondo where money economy has yet to arrive, there happens to be some very hard working villagers who number 600. As a result, they command a lot of wealth in terms of goats, beans and maize. At the same time, there are about 200 citizens of Bondo who are classified as poor in terms of World Poverty Bank index. There are also 200 recent post fake independence retirees who used to work in a nation called Nairobi. In their heydays, these retirees would visit the Bondo with second hand cars imported from Dubai. They would also used to speculate in shares hoping to get rich while doing nothing. In other words, they preferred to consume their savings to keep up with Jonnies and bidding up prices of existing assets instead of investing in productive ventures like the 600 citizens of Bondo who now have goats, beans and maize.
To enhance governance, the people of Bondo decide to make a constitution. To ensure they know what they are doing, the people of Bondo engaged a committee of lawyers led by professor Ghai and Nzamba Kitonga. Being very kind hearted lawyers and well versed with the international instruments they call treaties emanating from some mysterious august bodies calling themselves the UN and AU, which require the Bondo State to provide economic and social rights of man, these lawyers and the Dear Leader agree that, every retiree in Bondo shall be entitled to at least 1 butchered goat, 1 bag of beans and 1 bag of maize every month. For the poor, which the modern lawyer is not educated to critically investigate the cause because, he deals with something they call precedent, the new constitution provides that, they should be provided with half a goat, 40 kgs of beans and 70 kgs of maize every month.
This new constitution also, provides that, it shall be the noble and highly coveted task of the Dear Leader to ensure that, the retirees and the poor receive their due every month. In other words, the poor and retirees of Bondo State can now look up to the political power as the source of material betterment and as the guide to their personal destinies. They need not care about virtues of thrift, industry and initiative. Talk of making a virtue that was once considered a vice.
The question now is, since the Dear Leader has nothing himself, where shall he get goats, maize and beans to give the poor and the retirees? In the spirit of participatory democracy, the committee of lawyers go around Bondo State collecting ideas and they come up with an ingenious idea. To get enough goats, beans and maize for distribution to the retirees and the poor, the new constitution empower the Dear Leader to confiscate via something they call direct tax from those who have more goats, beans and maize than they need and then, distribute to those who need them in the spirit of liberte, egilate and fraternite. But, none of this is new. As far back as 1580 B.C. the Great Leader of Egypt did not levy tax on the incomes of his subjects but, on the incomes of the public officials. And, since public officials produce nothing, their taxable funds consisted of what they had farmed from the public. The beauty of the Egyptian method was that, the tax collector got his cut before turning the difference to the Great Leader. As a result of this arrangement, he could not be said to have taken bribes like a Bondo Tax officer will be accused of.
If you think we are using the word confiscation with malicious intent, consult Encyclopaedia Britannica which defines
taxation as that part of revenue of the State which is obtained by COMPULSORY DUES AND CHARGES. Thus, income and inheritance taxes are a DENIAL OF PRIVATE PROPERTY by the state. Why does the state deny common people private property? Simply,
income/inheritance taxation is an institution of state meant to keep masses under its heel, to favour its minions, to ruin the majority for the benefit of the rulers and thereby, maintain the old divisions and castes in a society. This is so because a government's despotic powers increase as its revenues increase and as the wealth of the masses decline.
The new constitution also provides that, the more goats, beans and maize the citizen of Bondo has, the more shall be taken from him/her. The people of Bondo are advised that, this strange doctrine is called progressive tax i.e. soak the rich, which is taught by all Bondian State accredited universities. The doctrine was brought to Bondo by leading economic and law professors who happened to have schooled in a land called the West.
Karl Marx would call this doctrine "FROM EACH according to his ABILITY/HARDWORK, to each according to HIS NEED/LAZINESS." But, to hide this communistic device, the Bondo professors of law, ethics, economics and even philosophy, call it progressive tax. One must wonder, why did Lenin have to have a bloody revolution when you can introduce serfdom by calling it progressive?
The new constitution goes further to provide that, where the goats, beans and maize confiscated from those who have more than they but, it is not sufficient to meet the needs of the Dear Leader, the poor and the retirees, the Dear Leader shall have powers to borrow goats, beans and maize locally and abroad.
Such loans shall be called public debt. To assure the creditors, the Dear Leader shall have the right to pledge as security the future goats, beans and maize of the hardworking villagers of Bondo. The end result of this new constitution is that, those who have sacrifice, save and do all is supposed to be done to raise goats and grow beans and maize shall have to part with a portion of their wealth every month so as to provide for the Dear Leader, the poor and the retirees in Bondo State and the public debt.
More so, the new constitution provides that,
before the Dear Leader distributes the goats, beans and maize which he shall confiscate from the wealthy to the needy, he shall pay himself first a salary. This salary, the Dear Leader shall decide himself or appoint a well paid committee of experts made up of his minions to decide his take. The committee of expert on Dear Leader's salary shall ensure that, the net income is as high as it was in the old constitution. Thus, the gross salary will be high enough to leave good net income as the Dear Leader is used to have. In any case, all the Bondo citizens wanted was for their Dear Leader to pay tax. To meet such stupid demands, the gross salary will be set appropriately so as to leave the net income as it was when the salary was untaxed under the previous constitution. Voila!
To ensure that all villagers of Bondo shall do an honest yearly declaration of their wealth to provide for the Dear Leader's self declared salary and still have some of it left for the needy, the new constitution provides that, every villager must fully and accurately declare his/her goats, beans and maize and give that information promptly to the Bondo Tax Revenue Authority (BTRA). Failure to declare and any cheating will be met with the Penal Code. Yes, that infamous book of punishment invented in the spirit of the Inquisition and of the teachings of the despotic regimes of the Orient. The declaration is so intrusive such that, even goats and cows paid as dowry must be declared for the purposes of taxation. After all, was it not the Master Himself, who taught us, give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar? But, how did Caesar get his cut? We are taught by historians that, up to the 4th century of the Christian era, to get the truth about incomes, they used racks and scourges to get the truth from suspected evaders.
Since the income tax will not be enough for the Dear Leader's salary and the social purposes, the new constitution also gives the Dear Leader the powers to impose tax on wealth creation i.e. the consumption taxes such as the VAT and excise. In other words, the Dear Leader will hide taxes in goods and services the people of Bondo consume.
If a citizen of Bondo has four kids, he must part with much of his wealth as compared to a citizen who has no kids when he buys bread. Thus, being responsible by raising a family will be punished for these taxes are a licence to live and one cannot run away from them. If he wants to avoid these taxes, then, he must commit suicide. If you add the income tax and the license to live tax, it will be about 60% of the Bondonian citizen income. In other words, the Bondian citizen will be 60% state slave. Only about 25% is remaining and chattel slavery/feudalism will be back.
Consequently,
the amount of wealth the citizen of Bondo MAY retain for himself shall be determined by the needs of the government of Bondo without his say. The Dear Leader will make such determination of his needs in his Budget speech which will be broadcast live in TV. In other words,
the government of Bondo will have powers to take everything the citizens has and leave him with wealth for mere subsistence just to allow him to produce something to be confiscated in like manner. Simply, the government of Bondo has A PRIOR LIEN on all property produced by its subjects. This is the essence of socialism for whatever else it may say; its first tenet is the DENIAL OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.
This is the blatant denial of the inalienable right to a man's property. This is not only a negation of a man's humanity, but, also, a negation of the Divine and Natural Laws. It is so because giving a man right to life is an empty title when he is denied the things that make life liveable, i.e. food, clothes and shelter. The question is, as one of the 1000 citizens of Bondo State would you accept such a Robbin Hood governance system as proposed by their new constitution? A system whereby, A and B put their heads together and decide what C shall be made to do for D? The vice of such scheming is that C is never consulted in the matter. He is simply clubbed by the police power of the state into diverting a part of his earnings to someone he has never seen. If no, why should Kenya be so organised?
In any collective/socialistic based society, truth must be killed. To make such a nation work, all people are forced to work for the ends selected by those in control. It is thus essential that the masses are taught to regard these ends as their own. This requires massive propaganda and complete control of sources of information. So, how do the masses get carried away? Simple. The leaders of constitutional reforms in Kenya have carried the masses by appealing to a common human weakness. This is so because, it is easier to make people agree on a negative programme such hatred of the enemy rather than engage in any positive task. In Kenya, the hatred has been directed against Moi and his orphans. Armed with such low standards for what constitutional reforms should be about, Kenyans are aiming at having a constitution that will punish such evil doers like Moi who took away Kenyan's wealth. To hinge a constitutional reform on such a negative programme can only lead to a disaster for all we have at the end of the day is a Bondo state as we describe above. In such a state, it is the robbers, idiots and such other men can rise to power. We prefer a well thought out constitution which should bring about independence, self reliance, individual initiative, reliance on voluntary charity etc.
We leave thee with some interesting story from the Bible and a personal observation of serfdom. In 1 Kings, Chapter 12, there is an interesting story where the people of Israel petitioned their new King, Rehoboam, son of Solomon to relieve them of the yoke his father had put on them. The designation of a levy on one's production as a yoke is very interesting especially for any man who has trained a bull to pull a plough under the yoke. The author of this article happens to have trained young bulls to pull the plough. When you start training a young bull to bear the yoke, it resists with all its might. The young bull will do whatever it can and this includes strangling himself to death to avoid the yoke. Such fight for freedom by a young bull shows how even animals value their freedom. Given this amount of resistance, one can say that, training a bull to bear the yoke may be one of the difficult jobs. However, through persistence and some serious beatings, we would subdue/wear the young bull until he bears the yoke with pride. It is the same with man for we pay tax with pride.
Having learnt to bear the yoke, the bull ploughs the farm like a tractor. But, what does the bull get out of all this labour? Nothing. Seen from this personal experience with bulls, it is understandable why the people of Israel saw taxation as a yoke. A yoke symbolises the beast of burden which has no right to property. As such,
when a human being is in a like manner deprived of what he has produced, which is the essence and sole purpose of income taxation, wealth creation and consumption taxation, he is degraded to the status of an ox. The people of Israel who could sense that man was created in the image of God and therefore, could sense this indignity and they wanted none of this yoke. It was for this reason they stoned to death Rehoboam's chief tax collector called Hadoram.
In our times, stupefied by state education whose objective is to train slaves who do not understand the meaning of liberty and who confuse serfdom for liberty, we have become worshippers of the state. After all, don't we teach income taxation law in our esteemed law schools? As a result, and very sadly and very depressingly, the modern man has accepted the yoke just like an ox.
However, bulls do better because; they never teach the young ones to bear the yoke. For us, we not only bear the yoke, but, we also teach our children how to bear the yoke.
As you head to the referendum, remember this. When the people of Israel had a "referendum" on whether to have a King as other nations despotic nations, Jehovah's parting words with Samuel were these:
“And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen: And the Lord will not hear you in that day.” It did not take long for this prophecy to come true. Saul, the first king, taxed the people about 10 per cent. David took care of at least 25 per cent more. Solomon, his son, required about 50 per cent. When they asked Solomon's son to reduce this yoke, he responded by saying this:
"Whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father did chastise you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions."
