Vivien Kellems, like Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, and Zora Neale Hurston, was a champion of individual freedom during an era of New Deal and war. Overcoming tremendous odds, she took on the Internal Revenue Service and won, at least a temporary victory.

Kellems was born on this day in 1896 is Des Moines, Iowa. She attended the University of Oregon (getting a M.A. degree) and was the only woman on the debate team. She worked alongside her engineer older brother, Edgar E. Kellems, who patented a cable grip. Moving to Connecticut, she founded the Kellems Cable Grips serving as president for more than thirty years. The company’s grips were used on such structures as the Chrysler Building, George Washington Bridge.

Already a prominent industrialist in Connecticut, she waded into the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment. In stating her case, she put forward her own brand of individualist feminism. By contrast, many “social feminists” at the time such as Eleanor Roosevelt opposed the ERA because it would strike down “protective legislation” for women. In 1943, Kellems asked “what are you going to do with all these women in industry? If we're good enough to go into these factories and turn out munitions in order to win this war, we're good enough to hold those jobs after the war and to sit at a table to determine the kind of peace that shall be made, and the kind of world we and our children are going to have in the future."

In 1948, however, Kellems took the national spotlight in the cause that would dominate the rest of her life. She refused to withhold income taxes from the paychecks of her 100 employees. The IRS retaliated by taking $8,000 from her bank account. Kellems took the feds to court arguing that because her workers had already paid their taxes personally, she should not be liable. For much valuable information on her struggles with the IRS, see here.

Her showdown with the IRS gained so much attention that “Meet the Press” had her on one of its first guests. The audio tape of the show still exists and reveals Kellems to be witty, feisty, charming, and eloquent in her defense of individual freedom. In her comments, she puts the blame on men for causing wars and big government.

In 1952, a jury surprised everyone by deciding in her favor and handing a rare defeat to the IRS. The same year brought the appearance of her book Toil, Taxes, and Trouble, an account of her fight with the IRS.

Kellems did not mellow with age. In 1969, she spurned a court order to produce her financial records for a federal district court, arguing that it violated her rights under the Fifth Amendment. She also refused to file a tax return. Although the IRS hit back with an assessment, she continued her defiance. For the rest of her life, she never filed another return. Shortly before her death in 1975, she described American tax law as “a hydra-headed monster” and vowed “to attack, attack and attack until I have ironed out every flaw in it."

And, yes, I would make the same argument if the sexes were reversed.

You are cordially invited to visit my blog and join a libertarian BB that I moderate.

Try as they might, apologists for the war in Iraq won’t be convincing when they insist that, at worst, the Haditha “incident” (or was it a mishap?) was the unfortunate work of a few bad Marines. It was something much worse.

When men trained to kill on a battlefield — this wasn’t the Salvation Army, after all — are ordered into civilian areas where many residents see the troops as an occupying force rather than as liberators, what would you expect to happen? We hear war defenders complain that “the enemy” doesn’t identify itself. Why should it? In the eyes of the “insurgents” they are resisting an army of occupation. That Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld didn’t foresee this resistance doesn’t mean it was unforeseeable.

So who is ultimately responsible for the massacre of the 24 unarmed Iraqis at Haditha? The one who put the Marines there: President George W. Bush.

The Sunnis mainly occupy the central oil-poor provinces, & so their political leaders have to continue to use violence. This last is directed mainly against two targets: (1) the Shia -- whose mosques & gatherings they bomb regularly & (2 ) govt functionaries (eg, policemen) & offices (eg, army recruitment centres.) Through such methods, they continue their battle for _further_ political power. Over the last few weeks Sunni politicians have shown clearly that they are dissatisfied with the amount of power they now have, & definitely want more. But Shia & Kurd politicians are not willing -- as yet -- to give them more.

The Kurd-majority provinces are also oil-rich, & Kurdish politicians have de facto autonomy. These provinces also contain several important minorities -- Arabs & Turkmen, in particular. Kurdish politicians of course use their power to favour their own followers, since such permanent minorities must be generally helpless. Where Saddam Hussain planted his Arab followers into key cities in these provinces & forcibly displaced Kurds, Kurdish politicians naturally do the opposite: they evict Arabs & Turkmen, to turn their properties over to Kurdish followers. It would appear that Kurdish politicians are generally secure in their exercise of power; the real struggle will be further south.

Thus the ‘referendum’ is the next stage in this power struggle. The important question is whether all the politicians will be satisfied with whatever power shares they obtain afterwards. Al-Sadr & the Sunni politicians clearly would like to increase their shares -- but will the other Shia rulers & the Kurdish rulers be happy with this? Alternatively, could the southern Shia & the Kurdish rulers simply go their own way with their provinces? The problem here is that Al-Sadr _also_ has a strong following in the southern provinces; & Sunni politicians would simply extend their violence in both directions.

In short: the long-suffering Iraqi people will continue to have an ‘interesting’ time (as in the old Chinese curse.)

(What? The constitution? Oh that. The outcome of the power struggle will be recorded in whatever document comes out afterwards. )

(*Amendment: That should read: Baghdad & a number of other cities throughout Iraq, from Basra in the south to Kirkuk in the north.)

Addendum: Other Shia politicians also oppose regionalism; & Turkmen politicians in the north have come out very strongly against regionalism, for obvious reasons.

Roark follows mainstream mythology in calling Spencer a" conservative," noting that he means the term in its modern rather than its classical sense. But I find it difficult to apply the term in any sense to a thinker who rejected private ownership of land; denounced state support for religion; condemned militarism and male supremacy as mutually reinforcing evils; regarded colonialism as a scheme to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor; and sought to replace the wage system with workers' cooperatives.

Roark also follows mainstream mythology in presenting Spencer as a defender of the wealthy. For example, Roark writes:

"Spencer did not dislike the poor per se, only the 'idle poor' who refused to work. (Spencer reserves comment on persons unable to work because of disability.) Interestingly, this condemnation did not extend to a critique of the 'idle rich,' a group that if they knew the meaning of industriousness had practiced such an art only once at birth."

"Accidents will still supply victims on whom generosity may be legitimately expended. Men thrown upon their backs by unforeseen events, men who have failed for want of knowledge inaccessible to them, men ruined by the dishonesty of others, and men in whom hope long delayed has made the heart sick may, with advantage to all parties, be assisted."

"It is very easy for you, O respectable citizen, seated in your easy chair, with your feet on the fender, to hold forth on the misconduct of the people -- very easy for you to censure their extravagant and vicious habits .... It is no honor to you that you do not spend your savings in sensual gratification; you have pleasures enough without. But what would you do if placed in the position of the laborer? How would these virtues of yours stand the wear and tear of poverty? Where would your prudence and self-denial be if you were deprived of all the hopes that now stimulate you ...? Let us see you tied to an irksome employment from dawn till dusk; fed on meager food, and scarcely enough of that .... Suppose your savings had to be made, not, as now, out of surplus income, but out of wages already insufficient for necessaries; and then consider whether to be provident would be as easy as you at present find it. Conceive yourself one of a despised class contemptuously termed 'the great unwashed'; stigmatized as brutish, stolid, vicious ... and then say whether the desire to be respectable would be as practically operative on you as now. ... How offensive it is to hear some pert, self-approving personage, who thanks God that he is not as other men are, passing harsh sentence on his poor, hard-worked, heavily burdened fellow countrymen ...."

Dear Cuz,

The lack of logic in the piece above, which you sent to me, is typical of the shoddy, but arrogant, thinking that got us into the Iraq quagmire in the first place; an extension of the comment of the senior Bush Adm. official last year that"we're an empire now, and we create our own reality," or, the Rev. Pat Robertson's, that George W. is"our Emperor."

The modern American Army has a very low % of troops actually wielding weapons compared to those involved in food and other supplies (a further armored Abrams tank gets 1 mpg, a bit less than my Civic Hybrid which I bought at Joe Marina Honda!), maintenance, bringing all the a/c and TVs needed, etc., extending back into Europe and the US for all this support. Further, much of our bombing has been done from places other than Iraq.

The only relevant figures would be to factor in our troops actually with bombs/guns, related to the number of Iraqis we have killed. A huge kill ratio I would suspect!

Our intrepid Firearms Refresher Course writer seems to have omitted the number of"Gooks," civilian and otherwise, who have gotten in the way of our bombs/bullets, or the discarded Depleted Uranium (DU) shells, the radiation from which has also been killing our own troops there since 1991.

I use that term, which originated in the Philippines in 1898, and which we have used to describe people in various nations since, where we have had the arrogance to proclaim that we're bringing 'em Democracy.

In the Philippines, we killed about 600,000, although the Army's figures list only about 220,000; McNamara acknowledges perhaps 3 million killed in Vietnam; and the figures have only begun for Iraq, although M. Albright noted, as early as 1995, that the 500,000 kids dying from our policies were"worth the price."

And, We dare to call ourselves a Christian nation? Of course, that phrase itself is a contradiction in terms, since real Christianity had little to do with nation states or empires until Constantine nationalized it in an effort to try to save the floundering Roman Imperial Welfare State. 

This is the legacy the Marina-Huerta Educ. Found. will have to cope with as we go abroad to try to help people with our own version of community building.

I am reminded of JQ Adams comments on July 4. 1821, that"America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." And, what would it profit us if we pursued that goal, but in the process lost our own souls?

Well, less than 200 years later (actually, only about 77 to 1898), we are out there seeking monsters, and those who follow the Empire, and Emperor GeoII/43, in my view, are, indeed, in danger of losing their souls, or, whatever small sense of humanity they still have left.

I will send a separate comment, if time permits, with respect to your Katrina/Welfare State piece, which you also forwarded to me.
On that subject, you might want to read, the journalist (from KC, Kan.) H.J. Haskell's great book (1938, 1943), The New Deal in Old Rome.
Right now, both in Iraq and New Orleans,"reality," seems to be blowing back, a real wash out!

Regards, & May the Tao & Peace be with You, Bill Marina, Exec. Dir. Marina-Huerta Educ. Found.

In 1977 the late economic historian Jonathan R. T. Hughes published a book called The Governmental Habit (updated in 1991 as The Governmental Habit Redux). It showed how pervasive government intervention in the economy has been since colonial times. The title captures an important phenomenon. People are in the habit of looking to government -- the only agency that may legally wield or threaten force against non-aggressors -- to get what they want. While earlier generations of Americans were hesitant to ask the local, state, or national government to do certain things (although perhaps not as hesitant as we thought), few modern Americans have any such scruples.

Americans of all classes expect the government (translation: taxpayers) to pick up the tab for services, and the politicians and bureaucrats to compel others to do things they don't want to. Someone must be buying Matthew Lesko's books or he wouldn't keep paying for those irritating television commercials.

People even want the government to do things that are outright dumb, such as compel us to conserve energy.