February 3, 1913, a date which will live in infamy


A hundred years ago the 16th Amendment was ratified, a horrible mistake.

The Sixteenth Amendment removed the U.S. Constitution's built in limit on taxation. Now taxation could be limitless and government growth boundless. The mechanism that enforced founders' ideas about limited government was taken away. A hundred years later: What limited government!? We have bureaucrats everywhere with big thick books of rules for all occasions.

Government has grown so costly and burdensome that it is a drag on the economy. It keeps getting bigger, more costly, more intrusive, and we inevitably become less free as a result. The people's economic independence is what the 16th Amendment took away. There is now a direct pipeline from your paycheck to the bureaucrats in Washington. What is more sinister, an increasing number of Americans receive more from the government than ever they contributed, or ever will. They will always vote for the gravy train.

The present-day growth of government and its programs is not sustainable. It is an upward graph forever, and you know those always end badly. You know the story of the goose and the golden eggs. Well, this is like that.

It is is wild-eyed radical talk, but we need to begin the process to repeal the 16th Amendment. Government cannot do much mischief if it is constrained to a small set of essential tasks and limited in its funding so that it can do no more. Limited government? Enumerated powers? Up with the Tenth Amendment, down with the Sixteenth? Who is with me on this crazy, radical plan?

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