Aaron Russo's compelling new documentary reveals an America betrayed long ago... and a glimmer of hope that we can still fix things.
Midway through Aaron Russo's America: Freedom to Fascism I turned to a friend and found him looking shell-shocked. "Everything okay?" I whispered.
"Ignorance really is bliss," he answered.
The look of discomfort remained on his face until we left the theater. "I've known most of the information they presented for a couple of years," I said. "But it's wild to see it all put together like that."
"You've known about this stuff for that long?"
"Yeah," I shrugged as we walked towards our cars.
"Man, how do you get through the day?"
That's a good question.
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Like you, I don't enjoy the prospect of living in a United States ruled by fascism. It's a near-totalitarian government of fear and intimidation, the very kind we fought to abolish in World War II.
Yet current affairs push our country away from the freedoms ensured by our forefathers. These past several years, Americans have shouldered an unspoken acceptance of domestic surveillance, rampant militarism, secret prisons, torture and cloak-and-dagger criminal proceedings while our heads of state reject the very checks and balances set forth in the Constitution. The recent passage of the Military Commissions Act buries one of the most basic rights granted any human being, the centuries-old concept of habeas corpus. That, coupled with the possibility of legislating civil disobedience as terrorism, means any American critical of the government is an enemy of the state to be whisked away without due process, without committing a crime, in perpetuity. The land of the free has abdicated its liberty.
For those who have been watching as the Bush administration runs roughshod over the Bill of Rights, the road to fascism grows ever wider. For director and producer Aaron Russo, however, that road was under construction decades ago. Where does he pinpoint the moment our nation died? With the dubious ratification of the 16th Amendment.
America: Freedom to Fascism is a compelling and troubling account of how the wealth of our nation was silently passed from its citizens to a handful of powerful bankers in 1913. That's the year the Federal Reserve Act and the 16th Amendment were introduced, giving a privately held corporation the means to control our finances while ensuring its interest payments through the strong arms of the newly-formed Internal Revenue Service. Ever since then, Russo suggests, Americans have been gradually conditioned to accept fewer freedoms and a lower standard of living... all the while considering debt and servitude as distinctly American values.
Russo's first and most cogent point is simple: Americans are not required to pay a federal income tax. That's a bold statement to make, as few people believe that such a fraud could be perpetrated for so long. My father, himself an accountant, insists that the income tax is a very real thing. Russo takes that same belief to IRS employees and simply asks them to cite where it says an unapportioned income tax is required of us all. Guess what? They can't. In a telling segment Sheldon Cohen, former commissioner of the IRS, goes so far as to reject Supreme Court rulings and the Constitution as benchmarks over what is legal with regards to taxation. Russo also interviews members of the tax honesty movement as well as disenfranchised IRS agents who agree that no law on the books conjures up a requirement to send the government part of one's hard-earned paycheck. Russo then showcases court cases where those accused of tax evasion have won precisely because the prosecution cannot provide evidence of a legal federal income tax law.
It's shocking to have it hammered into your head over and over that you've thrown your money away for nothing, but repetition is good; it helps knock loose the deeply entrenched belief that we owe a portion of our livelihood to our government.
The Federal Reserve Act is also singled out. Voted on by a skeleton crew of senators right before the Christmas recess in 1913, it turned over the business of printing money to the Federal Reserve, a private institution. That one seemingly innocuous act plunged our nation into massive debt and price manipulation. Russo points to a study done during the Reagan administration that showed that every penny of federal income tax collection went to paying down just the interest of money graciously "lent" to us by the Fed. Meanwhile, the value of the dollar has plunged to 4 cents on the dollar and Americans are struggling to get by with less income and more debt.
Most important, however, is the unifying theme of government oppression. Far from being a free nation, the United States is regulated to the point of absurdity. National identification cards, internal borders, RFID chips in money - why is the government so intent on monitoring its own citizens? Is it to combat terrorists or fellow Americans who realize they've been raked over the coals? We torture our own citizens, we eavesdrop on their conversations and their e-mails. We spend money we don't have to fight for freedoms abroad that we no longer enjoy here.
What are Americans doing about it? Not much. Many are terrified of fighting the IRS and confused by the function of the Fed. After all, how does someone fight big government?
While Russo can't claim to have all the answers, America: Freedom to Fascism is a film you must see. Even though it's not a highly polished production like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, it does what Moore couldn't - namely, instill you with a sense of rage over how badly our government manipulates and mistreats its constituents to further its own ends. This isn't a partisan attack on one particular political party; it's an attack on a corrupt and wasteful system with a few recommendations to help us reclaim our country from those who would bankrupt it. And though Russo plans to release it on the internet as quickly as possible, try to support it in theaters as well. After all, box office talks louder than word of mouth.
Can we avert a complete descent into fascism? It's possible... but only if we demand our freedoms and refuse to accept that a government that serves us can take them away from us.
To learn if America: Freedom to Fascism is playing in your area, visit the official web site for locations.
Canon Fodder is a bi-weekly analysis of politics and society.
