Facebook post by:
Senator Chris McDaniel ·
The federal income tax is the establishment’s most successful lie. It was sold to the public as restraint, but then perfected as control.
Like most folks in Mississippi, I grew up believing certain things because the grown-ups said them out loud, plainly, and without apology. They said some rules were permanent. They said some things were temporary. And they said government, like a neighbor, ought to know its rightful place.
The federal income tax was one of those things they swore was temporary. They claimed it would always be narrow. They argued it was aimed at the wealthy. They said ordinary people would never feel it.
Of course, they knew better.
When Congress sold the income tax to the American people in 1913, it wasn’t pitched as a new foundation of government. It was pitched as a correction. A small fix. Just a tidy way to ask the richest Americans to contribute a little more.
One percent, they said. Seven percent at the top, they said. Only the very wealthy will have to pay it, they said. And for a very brief moment, that was true.
But governments, like people, reveal their character not in calm seasons but when pressure arrives. And once Washington discovered how easy it was to raise money without knocking on doors or making eye contact, restraint became an inconvenience.
Wars came. Emergencies were declared. Crises always come as an opportunity for the robber barons in Washington.
And each one carried the same promise. Just for now. And just this once. But you already know the rest of the story.
Tax rates went up.
The reach of government expanded.
The tax base widened, predictably.
And then something quietly changed that never made the front page. The government stopped asking people to pay taxes and started taking them. Withholding turned citizens into spectators. The check was written before the paycheck ever landed. The loss became abstract, and the consent became assumed.
Folks don’t argue with money they never see.
That’s when the income tax stopped being about funding government and started being about sustaining the lobbyists, career politicians, and their fatcat buddies. Not roads and courts and defense. It became about power, programs, pork, and permanence. And it was all designed to get establishment incumbents reelected time and time again.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth most polite conversations avoid. The system didn’t grow because Americans suddenly demanded more from Washington. It grew because Washington learned it could grow without asking. Theft then became the norm, and buying votes became easier than earning them.
The tax code became thicker and impossible to comprehend. The exemptions multiplied. The lobbyists arrived, and the rules were bent. The favored and wealthy class learned how to shelter their money. The connected learned how to deduct. The rest of us just learned how to comply, becoming slaves to those who would demand the fruits of our labor.
Today, the income tax falls hardest not on the wealthy, but on work. On people who punch a clock, sign a W-2, and don’t have accountants and tax lawyers on speed dial. The people who were promised protection from the system became its most dependable source of fuel.
That wasn’t an accident. It was an incentive. And incentives explain government behavior better than speeches ever will.
The final lie was the most serious one. That the Constitution itself would keep this power in check. They claimed the Sixteenth Amendment was merely a technical fix, not a door flung wide open. But once apportionment disappeared, so did the last real brake. What remained was the political will of the so-called elites.
None of this required bad intentions. It required something more ordinary. People who discovered that spending is easier when someone else pays. Politicians who realized that benefits are visible and costs are buried.
That’s how systems rot. Not overnight, but one little justification at a time.
So when people say the income tax system is broken, they’re being charitable. Because broken things can be fixed. This system is doing exactly what it was trained to do. Extract quietly. Expand predictably. Endure indefinitely, while perpetuating the perfect crime against the American people.
The tragedy isn’t that the promise failed. It’s that we pretended not to notice.
A bloated government that can fund itself without visible consent eventually forgets who it serves. And a people who stop feeling the cost of government eventually stop demanding its discipline.
The inevitable result is more government, crushing debt, higher inflation, and corruption on a grand scale.
And until we’re willing to say that out loud, without hedging or compromising, we’ll keep being distracted about rates and brackets while ignoring the larger truth.
So we should be reminded. We aren’t the descendants of people who begged politely for better accounting.
We’re the heirs of strong men who dumped tea into a cold harbor because they understood something simple and dangerous: taxation turns citizens into subjects. Those men didn’t wait until the burden was unbearable. They acted when they recognized the pattern.
If we’ve inherited anything from them, it isn’t just the righteous anger.
It’s the courage to say, before it’s too late, that free people still get to decide when enough is enough.
