Irwin Schiff, the father (or perhaps grandfather, as Forbes observes) of the modern tax-resistance movement has died in prison.
His son Peter tried to get him a compassionate release, but the feds kept the poor old man in his cage.
I had the privilege of meeting Irwin Schiff in the 1980s. It was my job to drive him around for a series of local appearances in the city where I lived then. He was a very nice man, an inspiration, and — whether you think his theories were right or wrong — a brave man of conviction.*
*Tragically, that’s “conviction” in more than one sense of the word.
(H/T jed for the sad news.)
Whether his theories were right or wrong is irrelevant. “Taxation” is theft and is therefore immoral and unethical, and the bullies who stole his life are the unequivocal bad guys. Painful, lingering death on them all.
Very sad. Irwin Schiff is one of those people I’ve always classed as “my kind of stupid.” That he was a wacko, I believe, is beyond question. I always found his tax theory silly, in terms of plausibility right up there with ‘sovereign citizens.’ But he was a very brave and consistent wacko, and the world is poorer for his loss. That he died in captivity is an indictment, but not of Schiff.
“To successfully perpetrate a scam of this magnitude, hundreds of Code sections had to be written and pieced together in such a way that, while no section technically misstated the law or violated the Constitution, the sections, individually and collectively, had to be written to allow the Government to do just that. Those responsible knew exactly what they were doing. They were creating the greatest deception the world has ever seen.”
Irwin Allan Schiff. May his memory be a blessing.
“In 1968 he testified before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency in opposition to the removal of gold backing from Federal Reserve Notes. In 1976, he published a book entitled The Biggest Con: How the Government is Fleecing You.”
Schiff’s book was the first critical argument I heard against taxes, the economy, and the government. A few years after first reading Rand, Schiff’s publicity and his book [mentioned above] were the first “mainstream” activities that forced me into thinking “What is this country, really?–and where is it going?” After that, I read everything I could find to get a handle on the true nature of America’s past.
Not surprised they wanted it to become a true life sentence. Compassion is never really in their vocabulary. Can’t let the plebes think they can “get away” with stuff. We have to be shown that they OWN us.
He was nothing less than a political prisoner much the same as those Solzhenitsyn wrote about. That he was kept in prison after being diagnosed with terminal cancer was also a way to punish his family, specifically Peter Schiff. Despicable.