From the May 2003 Idaho Observer:

The Complicity of Compliance

by Hari Heath

Most people, like water, choose the easiest path. It is much easier to just go along to get along. Some talk of standing strong, but few actually do it. We conjure up heroes to promote our images of greatness, but Americans are not free, nor brave, because they have chosen the path of compliance. That path is now a super highway, thanks to our complicity with the forces of government and commerce -- real, imagined or otherwise.

Where did such complicity begin? It began before our time and will no doubt continue as long as the forces of power can find ways to obtain our compliance. Compliance and complicity are not synonymous words. But compliance creates complicity when we comply with something that is morally, ethically, lawfully or legally wrong. Our act of complying, makes us complicit in the operation of such a wrong.

What do the definers of words have to say?

COMPLIANCE: “Submission; obedience; conformance.” Black's Law Dictionary, 5th Edition.

“Action in accordance with a request, a command, etc. A tendency to submit easily.” Oxford American Dictionary, 1980.

“The act or an instance of complying; obedience to a request, command, etc. The capacity to yield under an applied force. The degree of such yielding. Unworthy acquiescence.” Reader's Digest Oxford Complete Wordfinder, 1996.

COMPLY: “Act in accordance (with a wish, command, etc.). Agree, obey, conform, consent, acquiesce, concur, submit, yield, accede.” Reader's Digest Oxford Complete Wordfinder, 1996.

“To yield; to accommodate, or to adapt oneself to; to act in accordance with; to accept.” Black's Law Dictionary 5th Edition.

What happens, as a natural consequence, when we “act in accordance with a wish, command, etc.” that is morally or lawfully wrong, or we “obey, conform, consent, acquiesce, submit, accede,” or “yield under an applied force” to what would ordinarily be a crime if it were not sanctioned by the powers to which we are complying? We “accede,” “acquiesce” and “submit” into complicity.

COMPLICITY: “The state of being an accomplice, as in a wrongdoing.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1969.

“Partnership in a crime or wrong doing. [complice (see ACCOMPLICE) + -ITY].” Reader's Digest Oxford Complete Wordfinder, 1996.

“A state of being an accomplice; participation in guilt. Involvement in crime as a principal or as accessory before fact. May also refer to activities of conspirators.” Black's Law Dictionary 5th Edition.

When we comply with that which is a wrong we become a complice or an accomplice.

COMPLICE: “One who is united with others in an ill design; an associate, confederate, accomplice, or accessory.” Black's Law Dictionary 5th Edition.

ACCOMPLICE: “a partner or helper, esp. in a crime or wrongdoing. Accessory, partner in crime, confederate; particpator, henchman, collaborator, conspirator, coconspirator, abetter.” Reader's Digest Oxford Complete Wordfinder, 1996.

Accessories to crimes?

By definition, when we accept, submit or yield to the unconscionable, immoral or unlawful conduct of government or its commercial affiliates, we become partners, accomplices, co-conspirators; or at the very least, an accessory to the crime. As Harold Thomas asked in The Myth of the Innocent Civilian, “Do citizens have a moral responsibility to pay attention? To be informed? To act? At what point do citizens become accomplices to the illegal or immoral actions of their government? The Creator gave his children ears to hear, eyes to see, and minds to reason. How long can a people fail to recognize that which sounds, looks, and figures to be gross evil? How much smoke would have to be in the atmosphere before people could be considered irresponsible for not finding and putting out the fire?”

But we are not taught to be firemen. Quite the opposite. Compliance is a major part of our social conditioning. Compliance begins with our parenting and is furthered in the education system. Then media and other programming takes over.

Societies do work best by co-operation and there is nothing complicit about complying with what is proper and good. Performing an “action in accordance with a request,” or “agreeing, consenting, accepting or yielding” to things which are necessary and proper does not infer complicity. For example, a Sovereign (unlicensed) driver will naturally stop at stop signs or travel at a reasonable and prudent speed for the conditions. And there is nothing inherently complicit with going a step further and engaging in common courtesy.

Complicity, by definition, involves “partnership in a crime or wrong doing” or “the state of being an accomplice.”

“At what point do citizens become accomplices to the illegal or immoral actions of their government,” asks Harold Thomas?

When they agree to, conform with, consent to, obey, concur with, submit to, yield to, accede to, or especially contribute to, the illegal, unlawful or immoral actions of their government. Then compliance becomes complicity.

The chain of complicit compliance is now an intricate web of governance that binds the world of man. Even though “the Creator gave his children ears to hear, eyes to see, and minds to reason,” most “people fail to recognize that which sounds, looks, and figures to be gross evil.” Let's follow a few links of this chain and see where our compliance leads us.

Accessories to extortion?

When a citizen “voluntarily” files an income tax return and pays income taxes, he or she becomes complicit in the illegal and unlawful tax scheme. This scheme is foisted upon the compliant U. S. population, who every year exhibits the “capacity to yield under an applied force.” This tax scheme is illegal because there is no law which requires most Americans to pay the tax and it is unlawful because the 16th Amendment was never ratified; the 5th Amendment precludes any obligation to testify against yourself; the Constitution requires that direct taxes like the income tax be apportioned; and many other provable points the government refuses to address.

More importantly, participating in this scheme promotes the misguided notion that taxes fund the expenditures of this nation. Those who comply, become complicit in such a fraud. Those who have ears to hear, eyes to see, and minds to do the math with, would know the taxes collected are less than the interest payment on the so-called national debt. Logic concludes that either: the interest (or a portion of it) gets paid; or the government is funded; or something else happens.

Logic further concludes, that since we continue to have a well funded government every year, in fact a government that makes sure other people's governments are also well funded every year, something else must be happening besides taxes. What kind of illegal, immoral and unlawful scheme of government could we be complicitly implicated in?

In 1913 Congress complied with the “request” of financial elitists to create a private banking cartel cloaked with the appearance of governmental authority. Congress became complicit in this scheme which gave away control of the national economy to this cartel, who were then empowered to create the hidden tax called inflation. This is how something else happens besides conventional taxes.

Accessories to bank fraud?

Using the magic of from-thin-air moneymaking, “debts” such as Treasury Bills become “assets” for the Federal Reserve cartel and account balances for the U.S. Treasury. The FED cartel can then make further “loans” to the commercial banks on a fractional (exponential) basis, expanding the M-1 money supply, and the U.S. Treasury can pay government employees and contractors like Halliburton, provide aid to poor foreign nations like Israel and fund global benevolence institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Complicity?

What kind of compliance makes the average citizen complicit in this unlawful and immoral financial scheme? If you apply for and receive a loan, you enable bankers to “loan” money into circulation which devalues the currency and creates the hidden tax called inflation -- a tax paid to the cartel. Every time we use the un-backed “legal tender” other wise known as a Federal Reserve Note or FRAUD (Federal Reserve Accounting Unit Dollar) we perpetrate its fraud. We become complicit with the misguided notion that money can be created by slapping ink on paper which is backed only by an obscure future promise to pay. And that brings us back to taxes.

Compliant taxpayers and the promise of successful future taxation form the basis of value for the Treasury Bills, which are issued to create the “asset” which allows the Federal Reserve cartel to expand the money supply and create the hidden tax paid to the banking cartel called inflation, allowing them to enslave the world with their debt based currency. Compliant taxpayers are complicit in the promotion of global economic slavery.

As The Myth of the Innocent Civilian questions, “whether confiscated or donated, if the fruits of their labors build the economic engine that powers their government, can a people expect to be held blameless for the offenses of their government, particularly those trespasses against foreign societies and cultures?”

If half the “fruits” of the average compliant American's “labors” are “confiscated or donated” through taxes, is such a taxpayer not complicit in the many evils perpetrated by the immoral and unlawful acts of government?

Accessory to tyranny?

On a smaller and more local scale, citizen compliance is obtained by application for some manner of benefit or participation with a presumably required “request” or “command” to “yield under an applied force.” We become complicit, when we apply for or submit to something that is not lawfully founded.

Like applying for a building permit when the first Article and Section of the Idaho Constitution declares, “All men are by nature free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are... acquiring, possessing and protecting property.”.

Complying with the request or command to apply for a building permit makes one complicit in the notion that “legal” ordinances, statutes and regulations can supercede the “lawful” requirements of the Constitution. Continuing compliance creates continuing complicity with schemes which defy the rights of man.

How many other forms of compliance is the citizen compelled to participate in? Most of our state Code may be “legal” but not “lawful.” The legislature is prone to dabble in any subject they deem fair game for their “legal” wrangling, but they rarely pay any attention to what subjects the Constitution authorizes them to “lawfully” legislate upon. Since legislative authority is delegated only to the legislature, complying with bureaucratically created regulations makes one complicit in such “unlawful” schemes. And then there's all manner of judicial doctrines, rules, procedures, and unwritten policies which sadly defy lawful, moral, ethical and even legal principles.

Compliant complicity

Unbridaled government is the result of compliance and complicity. The federal government provides an extreme example. The Constitution has 17 paragraphs in Article 1, Section 8 which authorize and limit the lawful subjects of federal legislation. A constitutionally non-compliant Congress has passed volumes of laws which bear no lawful recognition. Even more volumes contain regulations promulgated by agencies, not to mention over 13,000 Executive Orders.

When you vote, pay taxes, or participate in their schemes, you enable the corrupt cabal in government to justify their existence. A long chain of compliant complicity is nearing a climax with the ruse of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act II. Our homes, farms, vehicles, courts national economy, elective and legislative processes were stolen long ago by our compliance with immoral and unlawful schemes.

The solution is non-compliance. Not participating whenever you know a thing to be wrong. This is much easier said than done. Non-compliance does not necessarily require a head to head confrontation with a government determined to make you “yield under an applied force.” There are many creative ways devised by Americans to withdraw our consent to the immoral and unlawful. The pages of this paper and others are full of options. Explore and apply them.

De-invest yourself from the FED cartel's fraud. Minimize or avoid participation with the debt-based money system. Use Liberty Currency or commodity money. Work to disentangle yourself from any complicit compliance scheme. Invest in things which promote positive productivity or will retain value. Procure shelter from the coming storm for you and yours.

But for those who prefer the easy path of compliance, you may continue in your complicity -- until total compliance with an oppressive, intrusive beast government is the only option you have left. Under absolute tyranny, non-compliance is not an option.