Today we’re encountering situations in which our own government is being weaponized against us. We have watched as citizens are denied due process of law and treated as political dissidents; a politically motivated indictment was issued against a former president; the FBI targets people who attend Roman Catholic Mass as if they were radicals, and the list goes on. While we may often be less concerned with the issues of economic tyranny, the reality is this: A government without excessive funds is a government without means to oppress.

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Taxation is one of the easiest ways a government can oppress its citizens. Think of the Romans taxing the Israelites, or of the Boston Tea Party. Such bondage has been played out in numerous scenarios throughout human history. Taxation can be oppressive merely by its very nature. When taxes are used to fund an ever expanding government being weaponized against its own citizens, however, the oppression rises to a whole new level.

Alexander Hamilton foresaw that there would be no way to steer clear of the potential for inequitable tax burdens, without certain limitations being embedded within the government itself. The only way to avoid this would be if the national government were allowed to raise its own revenue, and this through very limited means. Exactly how that revenue was to be raised back then was far different from what we encounter today. Hamilton explained it clearly in his defense of how tax caps were to be secured by the Constitution:

“In short, the federal government would only tax through a consumption tax and that on very select items so that the element of discretionary spending was at the heart. Consequently, “[t]he amount to be contributed by each citizen will in a degree be at his own option and can be regulated by an attention to his resources. The rich may be extravagant, the poor can be frugal. And private oppression may always be avoided by a judicious selection of objects proper for such impositions.”

Hamilton proceeded to explain how this type of consumption tax predominantly on luxuries would, by its very nature, prevent taxes from expanding to any excessive amount:

“It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption, that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit; which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed — that is an extension of the revenue. … If duties are too high they lessen the consumption — the collection is eluded; and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. This forms a complete barrier against any material oppression of the citizens, by taxes of this class, and is itself a natural limitation of the power of imposing them.”

Hamilton ended his discourse on this form of taxation, a consumption tax on discretionary goods, by confirming his expectation that this would always remain the foundation for the predominant funding of the federal government:

“Impositions of this kind usually fall under the denomination of indirect taxes, and must always constitute the chief part of the revenue raised in this country.” Would that our federal government would revert to such a prescription for limiting taxes today.

This mindset that the national government’s power to tax needed to be actively constrained was coupled with the understanding that the national government was to remain tethered by its strictly and constitutionally enumerated powers. This powerful combination of ideologies kept our government lean and financially solvent. This was not a fleeting thing that lasted only a few short years after our nation’s founding. Through several presidential administrations, there was no national debt, and in fact, often there were tax surpluses available. In his second inaugural address, President Jefferson boasted:

“The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. … The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign articles, is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our seaboards and frontiers only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and pride of an American to ask, what farmer, what mechanic, what laborer, ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States?”

American history prior to Congress’ enacting of the income tax in 1913 demonstrated the reality that the federal government could pay its bills, keep the nation largely out of debt, and respect the privacy of its citizens. Even during wartime, Congress had a method of imposing direct war taxes that respected states’ rights and the privacy of the citizens. These are all proof that an excessively large government with crippling national debt need not be our reality. Such a situation lingers only because those who currently hold office refuse to hold to the principles of limited government that were so dear to our Founders.

Progressivism drove Congress at the end of the 19th century to enact a tax of 2% on annual incomes over $4,000 — the equivalent of over $320,000 a year today. At the time, Rep. William Cockran, a Democrat (ironically, perhaps) from New York, warned: “The imposition of such a tax is but a gentle, playful exercise of a dangerous power. It is merely showing demagogues the path of demagogy. … The men who offer this amendment as a sop to the discontented will be swept away by the rising tide of socialism. They will discover, when too late, that in overturning the barriers which separate liberty from anarchy they have liberated ten thousand furies who will sweep over them in a mad procession of anarchy and disorder.”

But Cockran’s warnings went unheeded; Congress passed the law anyway. The Supreme Court deemed this law unconstitutional in 1895, in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Company. In that case, the court held that a tax on rent or income from real estate is a direct tax, reasoning that “the whole beneficial interest in the land consisted in the right to take the rents and profits.” Congress reacted to this clear limitation on its taxing power by pushing through the 16th Amendment, with the record of its ratification being dubious.

Prior to this tax-and-spend mentality of the 20th century, Congress had largely limited its legislating to the constitutionally enumerated powers for our federal government. The multiplication of unconstitutional federal offices and the enabling of the federal government to manipulate the decisions of the American consumer are the results of having imposed the income tax. This massive increase of federal bureaucracies has in turn created a vicious cycle of taxation to fund an ever growing national budget and deficit. Ironically, despite the imposition of the income tax and resultant increase in federal revenue, Congress has tended only to engage in deficit spending and rack up massive debt since enactment of the 16th Amendment. This is due to a drastic shift of mindset among elected officials and, unfortunately, even among the American people as to the proper role, scope, and function of the federal government.

If we’re to make any meaningful progress towards payment of our debilitating national debt, we must start electing people who are knowledgeable of and committed to the proper role of the federal government. This means that we must massively shrink our federal budget and extricate ourselves from the destructive tax-and-spend mentality. Only by pulling our government back into the clear confines of the enumerated powers in our Constitution; by refusing to spend any more on bureaucratic agencies that ought not to exist; and by limiting taxation to what was intended to be its source — a consumption tax — can we ever hope to regain our independence. In short, let’s elect legislators and presidents who are willing to phase out the IRS and return the government to a national sales tax.

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Cynthia Dunbar is an attorney, a constitutional scholar, a former law professor at Liberty University School of Law, a board member of IFA, and co-host with Dave Kubal of IFA’s Constitutional Corner. Go to www.dunbarforamerica.com to learn more about our constitutional republic and subscribe.