"The founders sought to avoid this path to tyranny. So they declared a direct tax on the income of individuals unconstitutional. The reversal of that wisdom came during the "progressive" era at the beginning of the 20th century. A mentality of class warfare prevailed at the time, a first flush of socialism in American life, and the income tax movement was one of its results. Setting farmers against industrialists, urban folk against rural, poor against rich, everyone was led to expect that an income tax would hit the other group harder. Chiefly, of course, the argument was that the rich would pay a disproportionate share. What they didn't tell us was that in this socialist scheme anyone with a private dollar is suspected of being too rich.
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The income tax expropriates the independence that made possible American prosperity, American character and ultimately American self-government. By keeping the income-tax, we are inexorably encouraging moral poverty---the poverty of motivation, of discipline and of responsibility---that we all sense has deepened in the America of recent decades.
By wisely turning back to the wisdom of our founders, we can renew an economic environment of wholesome motivation in which responsibility makes a difference. Real tax reform can help us make an historic break with the servile and passive habits of recent years and begin a new era of confident liberty. If we still believe we deserve--and have the capacity--to be free, ending the income tax is a duty to ourselves and to our posterity."
--- Alan Keyes, Copied from The American Legion Magazine, March 2002, pages 40, 42, & 44