This is the third post in a series. The first post, What Happened to Our Constitution? — Part 1, linked to posts at American Civilization by James Atticus Bowden. The second, What Happened to Our Constitution? — Part 2, started a series of my own on the following topics.
- Part 2 – The Direct Election of Senators
- Part 3 – Income Tax
- Part 4 – Public Education
- Part 5 – American Isolation
Income Tax
The thesis of this post is so simple and so easily understood that it hardly seems worth explanation. Nonetheless, current events prove otherwise. So what is the thesis? For that I went to the National Taxpayers Union website.
“Realizing the power to tax is the power to destroy, and that the power to take a certain amount of property or of income is only another way of saying that for a proportion of his time a citizen must work for the government, the authority to impose a tax upon the people must be carefully guarded. It condemns the citizen to servitude.” — Calvin Coolidge (from here)
In this day and age, President Calvin Coolidge is relatively unknown. Why? As presidents go, Coolidge was a modest one. Consider this quote from the White House’s own website.
The political genius of President Coolidge, Walter Lippmann pointed out in 1926, was his talent for effectively doing nothing: “This active inactivity suits the mood and certain of the needs of the country admirably. It suits all the business interests which want to be let alone…. And it suits all those who have become convinced that government in this country has become dangerously complicated and top-heavy….” (from here)
Doing nothing, no matter how wise, rarely achieves lasting fame. It gives nothing for writers or other various sorts of dramatists to dramatize. Yet the wisdom of artists is a dubious thing. Considering the meaning behind an old Chinese curse.
May you live in interesting times. (from here)
What are interesting times? Those are times of strife, poverty, famine, enslavement, plague, and other trials. Until they are missed, times of quiet, peaceful prosperity — times that allow each of us to seek our own happiness — receive little attention. Thus, I suppose the wisest men often seem simple, and we too easily dismiss them as such.
Instead, we better remember and rave over the “innovators,” leaders who felt a deeper and greater need to spend other people’s money. Instead, we remember such as those who advocated the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.
What does 16th Amendment say? Considering the power it grants, its words are deceptively few.
Article XVI.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Although it is short, the 16th Amendment radically changed our society. To get a good perspective, I suggest The 16th Amendment: Washington’s Version of the Big Bang Theory, from the National Taxpayers Union website.
However, before you visit the NTU website, please consider one more observation. Last Friday, I had the opportunity to attend an event sponsored by the Prince William County Republican Committee, the Patriot Dinner at Heritage Hunt Country Club. The two main speakers were the Republican candidates for Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, and Governor, Bob McDonnell. Both spoke for constitutional government, Cuccinelli, in particular. Cuccinelli recalled the battles of our nation’s Founders as described in 1776 by David McCullough (see my review here).
Now, with their war over two hundred years distant, we forget the hardship battles with the King’s armies wrought on thirteen little colonies. We forget why the same men went to such great effort to so carefully frame the Constitution, spending a long hot summer far away from family and friends in the cause of liberty. We forget too the struggles for the Constitution’s ratification (see, for example, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights). Nonetheless, before we lose our liberty, we need to remember. We need to elect people who want us to remember and never forget.
