A Diabolical Tool: Ready to get rid of the income tax?

From Lawrence Reed at The Freeman:

Polls have shown for years that Americans think the current federal income tax system is “unfair.” And that was before the disgusting IRS targeting of conservatives, libertarians, tea party activists, Christians, and reporters the Obama administration doesn’t like. A large majority of the country favors a “complete overhaul” of the system. Even former IRS Commissioner Shirley Peterson has said, “we should repeal the Internal Revenue Code and start over.”

It’s not as though Americans weren’t given fair warning. Guess who made these remarkably radical statements about the very idea of a federal income tax more than one hundred years ago:

1. “… an abhorrent and calamitous monstrosity. . . . It punishes everyone who rises above the rank of mediocrity. The fewer additional yokes put around the necks of the people, the better.”

2. “… a vicious, inequitable, unpopular, impolitic, and socialistic act. . . . the most unreasoning and un-American movement in the politics of the last quarter-century.”

3. “… can only be collected by prying into the private affairs of the people by arbitrary methods hateful to the citizens of the republic.”

Those were the words of the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune respectively, commenting in 1894 on the first income tax to be passed by Congress.

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