"At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled." Any Rand, from her book, Anthem

That slavery existed throughout man's civilized history is undisputed. Most civilized countries recognized slavery and it wasn't just limited to the black race. Those that were designated slaves by kings, labored in service to the king (emperor) or to recreation for the King (gladiators). Slavery in exchange for debt was also prevalent and such slaves were known as bondservants under the name of indentured servitude. Many English subjects and Europeans entered America as indentured slaves in exchange for their passage and worked off their debt here in America.

Slavery was even embedded in the language of the U. S. Constitution where Whites were granted a whole number 1 for the purposes of the census count, but non-whites were only to receive three-fifths of a whole number in the count. Many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves. Tolerated and sanctioned slavery of the Black race existed for almost 80 years after the ink was dry on the Constitution. Apparently the phrase in the Declaration of Independence that said .....

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

..... applied to everyone but the black race and other designated so-called inferior races, as decreed by the White race.

It has always been a huge disconnect in the early days of America's history that the concept of freedom only applied to those who wrote the words.

The debate over black slavery in the Halls of Congress heated up in the years leading up to the Civil War, with most Democrats opposing the abolishment of slavery and most Republicans promoting it. The governors and legislatures of the southern states were dominated by Democrats and they vehemently resisted legislative efforts to free the black slaves by the North.

With President Lincoln's wartime Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, the move to free the slaves had begun. Finally, after a huge legislative battle, with President Lincoln applying pressure on the Democrats by virtually any means, including bribery, the 13th Amendment was passed and ratified by the states in December of 1865.

13th Amendment:

Section 1: Neither slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist with the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce this aricle by appropriate legislation.

The history of freeing the slaves after the 13th Amendment and reconstruction after the Civil War is mired in dirty politics, graft, corruption, fraud and even wholesale murder. Many slaves, although now free, were subjected to what was called the Black Code. Under the Black Code, especially in the Democrat-controlled south, a draconian unwritten code of conduct and behavior specifically applying to the freed slaves was in effect. In one Supreme Court decision the court decreed that the freed slaves were free, but codified into law the doctrine of separate-but-equal. It wasn't until the civil rights period of the 1950's and 60's that separate-but-equal was abolished in America.

"The High Court overturned its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson and outlawed the separate-but-equal doctrine (brown v. board of education of topeka, kansas, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 [1954])."

"Congress enacted a number of statutes to enforce the provisions of the Civil War Amendments, [including the 13th Amendment] but by the end of the nineteenth century, most of those statutes had been overturned by the courts, repealed, or nullified by subsequent legislation. For example, Congress enacted the civil rights act of 1875 (18 Stat. 336), which provided that all persons should have full and equal enjoyment of public inns, parks, theaters, and other places of amusement, regardless of race or color. Although some federal courts upheld the constitutionality of the act, many courts struck it down. These decisions were then appealed together to the U.S. Supreme Court and became known as the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S. Ct. 18, 27 L. Ed. 835 (1883). The cases involved theaters in New York and California that would not seat African Americans, a hotel in Missouri and a restaurant in Kansas that would not serve African Americans, and a train in Tennessee that would not allow an African American woman in the "ladies" car." (source)

Are Blacks free today as compared to the days of Black slavery? The fact is, way too many Blacks live below the poverty line, live in black-on-black crime-infested urban neighborhoods, have large high school drop-out rates and large out-of-wedlock births, where the "daddy" is but a shadowy figure in a one-night stand soap opera. A high percentage of Blacks are totally dependent on the government, as they drown in the cesspool of victim-hood and the ambition-killing perception of long-past discrimination. Is this life they now live freedom, or just a different form of institutionalized slavery? Did the 13th Amendment set them free, or just lock them in a self-induced servitude of their own making? Will the Black race ever shed the mantle of White discrimination and chart their own course in this land of opportunity? Did they get a raw deal, you bet, but as long as they continue to buy the government mantra that they are victims, they have no chance to break their invisible chains.

Does slavery and indentured servitude still exist in the world today? Absolutely! Young boys and girls from many countries are captured by force and taken to other countries as sex slaves. Poor people from Central and South America, Africa and Asia, eager to come to America, illegally of course, are offered a ride to America for a price, where the price is paid in hidden-from-view indentured servitude to the providers of the transportation. And the price is steep.

But blatant and notorious control of one person by another person or a government can be accomplished by methods other than the act of institutionalized slavery, indentured servitude, or force. Since the ink was dry on the U. S. Constitution, representatives of the people, at all levels of government, have been passing laws, laws that, in some form, restrict the behavior of people or businesses. Many of the laws that are passed have no basis whatsoever in the Constitution but are never challenged and allowed to stand. Most laws are passed at the insistence of some special interest group, with their foundations lodged in the political agendas of those in power, such as buying votes, or special treatment for their party "friends".

NOTE: Since 2008, lobbying in Washington DC by special interest groups has exceeded $3 Billion dollars every year. (source)

Just in the U. S. Congress alone, where 5,000 to 7,000 bills are introduced each year, a running average of 758 bills are passed into law. This does not include presidential executive orders (frequent), constitutional amendments (rare) and ratified treaties (less rare).

Then there are the federal bureaucracies that promulgate thousands of laws (they call them rules) that never see the light of congressional oversight, as required by Article 1, Section 1 of the U. S. Constitution. These bureaucracy rules are in the hands of the executive branch of government and can be promulgated on the whim of the president. As an example, Obama, using the power of the president and his cabinet to unilaterally promulgate more rules and regulations, is aggressively fighting the boogey man of man-caused global warming with billions in taxpayer dollars and ever-tightening legislation, in spite of mounting evidence that the planet isn't warming. Obama is well on his way to earning the title of resident dictator who gives short shrift to the Congress and the Constitution.

Every one of these laws, amendments, treaties and rules, restricts, limits, alters, modifies and controls the behavior and thus further erodes the freedom of individual Americans. The passage of the 16th Amendment creating the Federal Reserve and the IRS made every single taxpaying American an indentured servant to the debt owed to the Federal Reserve and the foreign nations that buy our debt. Your social security number is the loan number on your part of the debt. In a recent article on the Sovereign Man website, a single chart shows how the Federal Reserve controls all of us through the manipulation of the money supply, printing money and interest rates. Clever these central bankers. (source)

The social laws passed in FDR's three terms did more to wrap the people in chains than all previous presidents combined. He wrote over 3,500 executive orders in those three terms, each having the force of law, circumventing Congress. It is hard for people to understand that each new law, rule, or executive order limits the right of the people's free choice. The more laws there are, the less freedom there is.

The producers in America have been tapped to pay for the non-producers, where the non-producers have a claim, sanctioned and enforced by government, on the producers' sweat, blood, tears, income and property. That is indentured servitude by any other name. It is the antithesis of freedom.

The larger, more complex the law, the greater the restrictions on the individual. As more social laws are passed each year by Congress and given to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to enforce, the greater the power of the IRS and the greater the indentured servitude of the people to the IRS. That is slavery by any other name, especially given the 10's of thousands of undecipherable, complex and contradictory rules contained in the IRS code that no one understands.

It was just revealed that the IRS paid out almost $4 Billion to identity thieves in 2012. "The IRS sent a total of 655 tax refunds to a single address in Lithuania, and 343 refunds went to a lone address in Shanghai. In the U.S., more fraudulent returns went to Miami than any other city. Other top destinations were Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta and Houston." (source) So much for their fiduciary duty to manage our money. Why can't they catch these obvious frauds well before they are paid?

NOTE: Are you fighting the IRS? So are we! Check out our special IRS website to learn what you need to know HERE.

Environmental regulations have provided an excellent avenue for government to control the people even more, in the name of allegedly saving the planet. What is controlled by environmental regulations? Just about everything from land, to energy, to food, to water and to the very air we breath. Rural landowners are special targets for government-mandated environmental regulations and the thought of living free on the land has become a faded memory from the early days of the Republic.

NOTE: You rural landowners, do you want to fight back? Check out our Rural Landowner Handbook HERE.

Now comes Obama Care. The right of free choice has been so decimated by this law as to render freedom a shimmery mirage on a distant horizon. As millions of people end up in the no-man's land of having no health insurance, or being forced onto Obama's hopelessly-flawed website as the portal to the disastrous Health Care exchanges, the chains of slavery wrap ever tighter around their necks. Those clueless folks that voted for Obama now feel betrayed, even though it was clearly pointed out to them before Obama Care was passed, that the system built up around Obama Care was so unwieldly, so complicated and so financially unsound, that it had no chance of success and is now in the first stages of collapse. The damage Obama Care will do to the economy is immeasurable at this early stage, but the damage will be horrendous. Worse than that, the damage Obama Care will do to our freedom and free choice is but the whisper of the coming death of our Republic.

So, ladies and gentlemen, the door you heard clanging shut on the jail in which you now reside, was the unmistakable sound of the repeal of the 13th Amendment, where slavery and indentured servitude, once outlawed, have now been embedded in American law and institutionalized in the culture through public education, legislation and the courts. The chains of slavery tighten every day while the people whimper and wine, the fight for freedom having been replaced by irrational fear of their own government. It is readily apparent to this author that all Americans have become involuntary slaves and indentured servants to the almighty federal government and the 13th Amendment has been effectively repealed.

The quote by Ayn Rand at the beginning of this article is right, but it is only right if the people are willing to defend and preserve their freedom and free choice ..... by any means. For the last century, the people of America have not shown what it takes in large enough numbers to preserve their freedom and maintain the Republic in liberty. What most Americans have done is to allow themselves to be lured into the freedom-killing trap of government dependence.

Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property issues and author of his weekly column, "In Defense of Rural America", is the President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, (NARLO) (http://www.narlo.org) a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State and dedicated to restoring, maintaining and defending property rights for urban and rural landowners. Mr. Ewart is now engaged in a plan to expose the Internal Revenue Service with his website (http://www.attackwatchspies.com). He can be reached for comment at ron@narlo.org, or by phone at 1 800 682-7848.