Fifty years ago, a remarkable libertarian, personal friend, witty Georgite, then editor of Human Events, came out with a landmark book, The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (text and PDF). Its author was Frank Chodorov who saw raging about him—what’s new?—interventionism, welfarism, political mischief and corruption galore, an ongoing mangling of the limited government model of the Founding Fathers. Hence the "all evil" in his subtitle, which he described to me privately as "the rape of society." But what was new, then and now, goes beyond many a neocon’s plea today for a renewed Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights or a flat-rate income tax. Instead, Chodorov called for radical surgery: outright repeal of the Sixteenth (Income Tax) Amendment of 1913. Then Uncle Sam was suddenly armed with a tax supercannon, one financing the federal takeover of America, one sinking states' rights mainly via "grants-in-aid" (read payola) to states and localities (further sunk by the Seventeenth Amendment, also of 1913—this amendment requiring popular election of U.S. senators formerly appointed by the state legislatures).
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