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‘The Ultimate in Taxation Without Representation’

The United States boasts plenty of coal, wood, and fowl — enough to provide all the tar and feathers required.

Indeed, the globalist bureaucrats at the United Nations should remember how Americans deal with unconstitutional attempts at taxation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.N. this week stands “poised to impose what amounts to a global tax on carbon emissions” — what the WSJ called “the ultimate in taxation without representation.”

Despite lacking both sovereign authority and enforcement power, the U.N.’s London-based International Maritime Organization could attempt to saddle ships with taxes ranging from $100 to $380 per metric ton of carbon dioxide that exceeds a certain emissions level.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened sanctions against countries whose U.N. bureaucrats vote for such nonsense.

Shockingly, the WSJ called this “the first instance we can find of the U.N. claiming the ability to levy a tax — the revenues from which will be paid directly into a U.N.-controlled fund.”

The IMO, of course, would both establish and manage that fund.

Needless to say, a power grab of this nature awakens American patriots to the perils that beset our ancestors.

“No taxation without representation,” Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida wrote Tuesday on the social media platform X.

Will the IMO’s “net zero framework” pass?

Then, the governor told a historical truth that every American should understand.

“Being taxed by the UN would be far more offensive than the taxes imposed by Great Britain against the American colonies more than 250 years ago. Those taxes sparked the American Revolution,” DeSantis added.

Finally, the governor spoke for Americans (including yours truly) who resent haughty international bureaucrats.

“The UN should be defunded, not seeded with new tax revenue,” DeSantis concluded.

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DeSantis, of course, had it right when he declared U.N. taxes “far more offensive” than those imposed by the 18th-century British Parliament. In fact, the architects of those long-ago British taxes seemed legitimately blindsided by the violent American opposition.

Take the 1765 Stamp Act, for instance, which taxed printed materials such as newspapers, almanacs, and college diplomas. In their defense, British officials could reasonably claim that the tax would weigh heaviest on literate and well-to-do Americans.

Nonetheless, the manliest members of that manly, revolutionary generation denied Parliament’s authority to levy such taxes in the first place. A young John Adams even accused the British of targeting printed materials so as to deprive the colonists of knowledge.

Whatever British officials’ motives might have been, they simply could not collect the taxes. By Nov. 1, 1765 — the date the act took effect — violence or the threat thereof, including tarring and feathering, had driven nearly all stamp distributors from office.

Thus, it boggles the mind that anyone at the U.N., which has not exactly ingratiated itself with Trump or his supporters, would think that Americans, of all people, would concede an international organization’s pretended authority to tax us without our consent.

Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.

Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.

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