Conspiracy: A Biblical View, by Gary North - EntreWave

THE PEOPLE'S WILLTechnically, it is an illegal amendment. 5 Is this really significant,except as a curiosity of history? The 14th amendment wasn't ratifiedlegally, either, since certain states were not allowed to vote. The pointis, the public in 1913 was willing to ratify it, even though certaintechnicalities were missing. There was no hue and cry of outragewhen the amendment was announced as having passed. Why not?Therein lies a tale.)How was that amendment sold to American voters? By anexceedingly evil appeal: "Soak the rich!" It was an appeal based oncovetousness, pure and simple. And, like all forms of evil, itbackfired. It led to the capture of the middle-class voters by the richwho were supposedly the targets of the law.Rockefeller, Harriman, Morgan, Carnegie, and all the other "mastersof 1913" knew how to to recruit and control professional politicians,who in turn knew how appeal to the voters. The 16th amendment wasa classic Brer Rabbit ploy: "Don't toss us into that briar patch!Anything but that." And poor, dumb middle-class voters acted justlike Brer Fox. They tossed the elite into the briar patch — the briarpatch of tax-exempt foundations, tax loopholes, family trusts, and allthe rest· The elite had the lawyers and accountants. The middle classdidn't.Liberal historian and social commentator John Brooks has describedthe process well:. . . when the founder of the Ford Motor Company andhis son made their wills, they left 90 percent of their Fordstock to their private foundation rather than paying nearlyall of it to the government in taxes, thereby making thatfoundation the richest charitable organization in thehistory of the world — and, incidentally, preservingfamily control of the motor company, and even relievingthe heirs to the other 10 percent of the stock of thenecessity of paying any inheritance taxes! Thehard-shelled Henry Ford, who had lived beyond his time,must have gone to his grave in 1947 chortling over howhe had beat the government out of his money and madephilanthropy pay. 6John D. Rockefeller, Sr., did the same thing. Andrew Carnegie did,http://freebooks.commentary.net/freebooks/docs/html/gnco/html/2.htm (7 of 10) [5/26/2000 1:48:04 PM]