The Patriot Threat

[LPC]

The Patriot Threat is the title of a recent novel by Steve Berry. The premise of the novel is that the 16th Amendment was never actually ratified, and that Secretary of State Philander Knox knew it hadn't been ratified and was part of a conspiracy.

According to Amazon.com, Steve Berry is also the author of The Lincoln Myth, The King's Deception, The Columbus Affair, The Jefferson Key, The Emperor's Tomb, The Paris Vendetta, The Charlemagne Pursuit, The Venetian Betrayal, The Alexandria Link, The Templar Legacy, The Third Secret, The Romanov Prophecy, and The Amber Room, all of which seem similarly well grounded in historical reality.

[Randall]

Does the head Patriot wear a hoodie and mumble a lot?

[Pottapaug1938]

And, was there any truth to the allegation that there was a conspiracy to artificially deflate the sales figures?

[Judge Roy Bean]

Steve is actually a great writer. I've read several of his books and I'll probably add The Patriot Threat to my library.

[Arthur Rubin]

There is the specific genre of "non-fact" books. It appears that Steve is an expert.

[webhick]

It's number 10 in a book series, FYI. I'm on the fence as to whether I should start at book 1 and work my way up or just jump in at 10 and go back if I get committed to the characters.

[fortinbras]

The premise of the novel was, obviously, based on The Law That Never Was, which, in turn, was based on a 1913 legal memorandum by the legal staff of the US Dept of State for Secretary of State Knox - in which the conclusion offered was that the trifling typographic variants of the various documents received from different states reporting their ratifications of the 16th Amendment did not impair the validity of its adoption. Among the legal considerations was that the true and official text of the proposed amendment was readily available from many sources for all the legislators, that it was not always clear at which stage in each ratification that the variants were introduced (the legislators presumably voted on the true and authentic text but some minor clerical error crept in only afterward in the paper sent to Washington reporting the legislature's vote), that no state could change the text of the proposed amendment, etc. I would also add that nobody bothered with such a painstaking study of tiny variants in the ratifications of OTHER amendments - there are, in fact, variants (mostly in the punctuation) of the Second Amendment ratifications back before typewriters and photocopiers. No state legislature - nor even one legislator from any state - ever came forward and said that there was a misunderstanding about what was being voted on when they ratified the 16th Amendment.

Several court challenges to the 16th Amendment were attempted after the publication of The Law That Never Was - including one by the authors of that book - and all were rejected.

If, for argument's sake, Knox had decided that the 16th had not been adopted, the US would have continued to finance the federal govt by means of substantial tariffs on imported goods, as this had been the govt's main source of revenue until then. Not a disaster, but the tariffs had been hobbling the US as an international trading powerhouse.

[Pottapaug1938]

The federal government would also have continued to receive income from the sale of alcoholic beverages. The passage of the 16th Amendment was used, by Prohibitionists, as a rationale for banning alcoholic beverages, since the federal government had a replacement for that revenue stream.

[Famspear]

The premise of the novel was, obviously, based on The Law That Never Was, which, in turn, was based on a 1913 legal memorandum by the legal staff of the US Dept of State for Secretary of State Knox - in which the conclusion offered was that the trifling typographic variants of the various documents received from different states reporting their ratifications of the 16th Amendment did not impair the validity of its adoption.

And William J. Benson, the fraudster who co-authored The Law That Never Was, was really just continuing a fraud that had surfaced in federal court cases around 1975, some sixty-two years after the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified.

....the legislators presumably voted on the true and authentic text but some minor clerical error crept in only afterward .... No state legislature - nor even one legislator from any state - ever came forward and said that there was a misunderstanding about what was being voted on when they ratified the 16th Amendment....

You've hit the central point here. If a given state legislature had not really intended to ratify the amendment in the precise verbatim words of the text as published by the United States Government Printing Office (now called the United States Government Publishing Office), then that state legislature would have complained. There would have been a dispute.

I have raised this point with tax protesters over and over, and not one of these goofballs has ever been able to respond effectively. It's as though this central point never occurred to them.

No one objected in 1913, or 1914, or 1915, or 1916, or 1917, or 1918, or 1919, or 1920, or 1921, or 1922, or 1923, or 1924, or 1925, or 1926, or 1927, or 1928, or 1929, or 1930, or 1931, or 1932, or 1933, or 1934, or 1935, or 1936, or 1937, or 1938, or 1939, or 1940, or 1941, or 1942, or 1943, or 1944, or 1945, or 1946, or 1947, or 1948, or 1949, or 1950, or 1951, or 1952, or 1953, or 1954, or 1955, or 1956, or 1957, or 1958, or 1959, or 1960, or 1961, or 1962, or 1963, or 1964, or 1965, or 1966, or 1967, or 1968, or 1969, or 1970, or 1971, or 1972, or 1973, or 1974.

The very earliest record of the silly "Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified" argument that I have found is in the year 1975. DId this record involve a state legislature -- a legislature complaining that the state had not ratified the actual verbatim text?

Noooooooooo.



To paraphrase something I wrote in Wikipedia:

This very earliest record is in a court case involving a tax protester. This was the case of United States v. Scott. The defendant, James Walter Scott -- who called himself a "national tax resistance leader" -- had been convicted of willful failure to file federal income tax returns for the years 1969 through 1972, and the conviction was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. United States v. Scott, 521 F.2d 1188 (9th Cir. 1975). And, see the 1977 case of Ex parte Tammen, 438 F. Supp. 349, 78-1 U.S. Tax Cas. (CCH) paragr. 9302 (N.D. Tex. 1977).

In over a hundred years, no state legislature has ever claimed that the state did not ratify the precise, verbatim wording of the text of the Sixteenth Amendment as published by the U.S. Government Publishing Office.

[Famspear]

By contrast, Bill Benson and "Red" Beckman published The Law That Never Was in 1985, about ten years after this goofy nonsense surfaced.

[Famspear]

The thought processes of tax protesters are riddled with the kinds of failures in critical, logical thinking of which the "Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified" argument is just one example.

Another example is the Peter Hendrickson/Cracking the Code income for Federal tax purposes means only amounts received in connection with the exercise of a federal privilege nonsense. Some of the adherents of this nonsense like to argue, in so many words, that when the modern income tax statutes were enacted in 1913, the only income that was taxed was income related to a federal privilege.

Yet, because of the relatively high exemptions in the tax law back then, the very people who were paying the federal income tax before World War II were the high income people, and they were paying the tax on income generally, not just income connected to a "federal privilege." These were the very people who would have been most likely to be aware of the law. These were the people most likely to be able to afford tax lawyers to contest the imposition of the tax if they had thought the tax did not apply to their income.

There is NO RECORD of anyone having ever raised the "federal privilege" argument in all those years. The government privilege argument did not surface until it was raised by -- you guess it -- a tax protester! The earliest case I have found is United States v. Buras, 633 F.2d 1356 (9th Cir. 1980). Sixty-seven years after the modern Federal income tax was enacted in 1913.

[Judge Roy Bean]

It's number 10 in a book series, FYI. I'm on the fence as to whether I should start at book 1 and work my way up or just jump in at 10 and go back if I get committed to the characters.

Start with 1. IMHO it's one of the better ones.

[operabuff]

I thought that the author might be merely playing with the idea as the basis for a novel. I was hoping that his afterword might contain a "don't try this at home" warning. But it doesn't. Instead, he describes Benson's arguments as "compelling" and the court opinions to the contrary as weakly reasoned. So I think he might be a kool-aid drinker. I can see the first taxpayer application for reasonable cause relief now. "I relied on Steve Berry's book."

By the way, JRB, it's really hard for me to credit your assertion that Berry is a "great" writer. Is he really in a league with William Faulkner and James Joyce, et al., or is it that he just writes compelling thrillers?

[noblepa]

... Instead, he describes Benson's arguments as "compelling" and the court opinions to the contrary as weakly reasoned. So I think he might be a kool-aid drinker. I can see the first taxpayer application for reasonable cause relief now. "I relied on Steve Berry's book."

Why can't these people understand that, "weakly reasoned" or not, the court decisions are binding. That's the American system of jurisprudence. The Constitution and the law are what the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, say it is. You can disagree with them. You can argue what the law SHOULD be. You can argue that they got it wrong (I feel that way about the Citizens United decision), but the fact remains that they are the final arbiter of what the law IS.

And, in a case involving the 19th amendment (women's suffrage), SCOTUS ruled that ratification is a political question, not a legal one, and that the Secretary of State has the final word on that.

So, right or wrong, SOS Knox declared that the 16th amendment had been ratified, so for all intents and purposes, it WAS ratified.

[Judge Roy Bean]

...

By the way, JRB, it's really hard for me to credit your assertion that Berry is a "great" writer. Is he really in a league with William Faulkner and James Joyce, et al., or is it that he just writes compelling thrillers?

Give me a break - let's not pick over the term "great." I rank him with the likes of Clive Cussler and Dan Brown. I happen to like the genre and I think repeatedly making the NYT best-seller list makes someone a great writer.

[fortinbras]

It's a great mistake and very misleading to call this the "Patriot" Threat.

Most of these people are not patriots in any conventional sense - they repudiate their American citizenship, they want to overthrow US laws, they refuse to live by the statutes adopted by consent of the governed, etc.

[The Observer]

...[T]hey repudiate their American citizenship,...

Please. None of the sovrun/freemen have ever legally repudiated their citizenship. They may pretend to repudiate it, may cast aspersions against being a citizen, and/or claim to have a more powerful status as a sovrun/freeman, but deep down they know they are citizens and would never do anything to jeopardize losing their citizenship.

This is why my evil side keeps hoping that a law is passed that will allow the US to cancel a sovrun's citizenship when he or she enters a courtroom and starts making arguments that they are not a "citizen" - with the consequence of them immediately being deported to Somalia via parachute drop from a C-130.

[Arthur Rubin]

Most of these people are not patriots in any conventional sense - they repudiate their American citizenship, they want to overthrow US laws, they refuse to live by the statutes adopted by consent of the governed, etc.

[Un]fortunately, one cannot lose one's American citizenship merely by saying so. One must take specific action at an American Embassy in a foreign country. I don't think there's an American Embassy in Frickenstein, or even Freedonia.

There are probably thousands of draft-dodgers who went to Canada and became Canadian citizens, but are still US citizens (and subject to US income tax).

[morrand]

[Un]fortunately, one cannot lose one's American citizenship merely by saying so. One must take specific action at an American Embassy in a foreign country. I don't think there's an American Embassy in Frickenstein, or even Freedonia.

For those of you interested in the precise details, see 7 FAM 1260.

Curiously, and unfortunately, that document contains a form of memorandum from the embassy to the Department of State that specifies the applicant's name is to be given in all caps. Clearly, the State Department is only interested in letting the strawman escape the bonds of citizenship.

[eric]

Most of these people are not patriots in any conventional sense - they repudiate their American citizenship, they want to overthrow US laws, they refuse to live by the statutes adopted by consent of the governed, etc.

[Un]fortunately, one cannot lose one's American citizenship merely by saying so. One must take specific action at an American Embassy in a foreign country. I don't think there's an American Embassy in Frickenstein, or even Freedonia.

There are probably thousands of draft-dodgers who went to Canada and became Canadian citizens, but are still US citizens (and subject to US income tax).

Not just draft dodgers - there are approximately 750,000+ persons living in Canada who hold US citizenship, many of them simply ignored the fact that because, although born in Canada, since their parents were US citizens, they are as well, and subject to the whims of the IRS. It wasn't a big issue until last year when FATCA compliance reporting by Canadian banks went into effect. Apparantly there has been a bit of a rush on repudiation of US citizenship by some people living in Canada, simply because they don't want the hassles of filing US tax returns for the last 5 years, even though they probably don't owe anything.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/taxes/i ... -1.1179163
As an aside, the closest city to me is Calgary, in the 2011 census, 11% of the population had US citizenship which means roughly 110,000 people.