Rising from dead: ‘Taxation without representation’

“No taxation without representation!” This refrain was shouted in Continental legislative sessions, printed in Patriot newspapers, and shouted from the streets during at-times riotous protests against the tyranny being imposed on Americans by the English Crown.

Today, we have representatives in name only, serving only their own purposes and working towards things that are not only not in our interest, but are entirely harmful thereto. We send “representatives” to Washington, and they vote for more taxes, more spending, more funding for their friends and the special interests that bankrolled their campaigns. They pass more laws restricting our freedoms and asserting Federal dominance over our state and local governments. They dig deeper into our pockets to fill their own. We can email them, we can write letters, but what consequence is there for them if they don’t uphold their oaths? None. They are shielded from consequence by their position because we have accepted that they must know better how to run our lives than we know ourselves. I do not accept this.

American politics is broken. To have a representative in name only, who doesn’t actually represent or even try to represent your interests, is to have no representation at all. And the more Congress hands their legitimate authority over to unelected, bureaucratic executive agencies, giving them the power to tax, make and enforce law, and adjudicate infractions of their unaccountable ordinances, the more “taxation without representation” rises from the dead and threatens American liberty today.

No taxation without representation! — Tim Lynch, Chico