IRS Abuses: Relearning Our History
Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)
Sixty years ago, the civil rights movement began in earnest an epic struggle to end legal discrimination.
That fight serves as an object lesson for those speaking out against the abuses of the IRS directed against our fellow citizens.
To set the record straight, I am not a member the Tea Party as I disagree with many of its policies, not the least of which is a sense that it stands for whatever any one of its proponents says on any given day, no matter how confusing or contradictory.
But the IRS targeting of the Tea Party is a moral wrong.
It is an abuse of power that every American, regardless of their political positions, should oppose. It is a threat to our political freedoms. History teaches why.
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” laws enforced by the government were unconstitutional as they created an inferior class of citizens who were adversely discriminated against. That is exactly what the IRS is doing when it targets the Tea Party.
Let us take an example from Little Rock during the school desegregation struggles in 1957. The state government’s target then was the NAACP and here is what was done:
Legislation was enacted that “required organizations and individuals ‘challenging the authority’” of government officials [i.e. opposing segregation laws] “to register…and make regular reports of their budgets.” It further required the NAACP to reveal its members names.[1]
Back then, the purpose was to use government power to silence opposition to the state-sanctioned status quo of racial segregation and today, silencing the opposition is the aim of IRS Tea Party targeting.
In 1957, the government also tried to divide their opponents by “trying to get ‘good’ Negroes, and none of the ‘radicals’ who sued them” into the desegregated schools.[2] The goal was to punish those who spoke out against the status quo.
Now compare that to what the IRS is doing to Tea Party groups:
“The deal boiled down to this: We’ll do our job, the IRS said, if you give up your rights.”[3] When confronted with this government imposed inequality, Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots stood her ground and refused to allow what the IRS apparently deemed ‘good’ organizations to be granted greater rights “than those of us who had been targeted.”[4]
As in the 1950s, the goal of the IRS is to use the law to create an inferior class of citizen as punishment for speaking out against the status quo.
Civil rights mean civil rights for all.
Free speech means free speech for all.
When the government targets American citizens and offers “separate but equal” rights to silence them then it has done a great injustice to our nation and its people.
It was wrong in the 1954 and it is wrong sixty years later.
[1] See Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Penguin, 2013), p. 96. This is a “must read” book for any serious student of American history.
[3] Kimberley A. Strassel, “All the President’s IRS Agents,” The Wall Street Journal, dated 28 February 2014.
[4] Strassel, “IRS Agents,” dated 28 February 2014.
