James Madison, a major architect of the U.S. Constitution and fourth U.S. President, said it best, all those years ago: If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. It’s doubtful that Madison, or anyone else envisioning the long-term health of a free country, would have approved of the IRS in the first place. The roots of the IRS (according to its own website) go back to the Civil War when President Lincoln and Congress, in 1862, created the position of commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacted an income tax to pay war expenses. The income tax was repealed 10 years later. Congress revived the income tax in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional the following year. At most, the IRS was a temporary agency designed to help raise revenue during the greatest crisis of the Republic to date, and even since: the Civil War. The United States was still a limited government, at that time. There was no income tax, and there was no government providing all the goods, services, wealth transfers, and selective regulation it now provides today. Under the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913, the income tax — tragically for the good of the country — became law.
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 00:11:11 +0000
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