David Sehat: Would Today's Tea Party Have Opposed the U.S. Constitution?
[David Sehat is assistant professor of history at Georgia State University. His first book, “The Myth of American Religious Freedom,” was published in January.]
It was exactly this point on which the Constitution’s opponents focused, much like our current small-government party does today. They worried that the power of direct taxation would upend the dominance of the states, making them mere auxiliaries of a powerful national government. As a result, they sought a modification of this taxing power that still preserved the autonomy and even the primacy of the states.
In the Virginia ratification debates, for example, opponents of the Constitution sought an amendment that would allow the states themselves to requisition federal taxes, so that all money flowed though the states to the federal government in order to maintain states’ rights over taxation. Explaining the amendment to Thomas Jefferson (who was in France), the Federalist and Founder James Madison noted that the purpose of such a proposal was to “mutilate the system” by attacking its taxing power so that it could no longer “answer the purpose for which it was intended.” That purpose, in Madison’s view, was the creation of a government of national supremacy fit for a true nation.
The Constitution’s proponents saw quite clearly that the fate and character of the nation was at stake in the Constitutional debate, so they spoke more explicitly about the connection between a strong government and our national health than tea party proponents care to acknowledge. Only if the federal government was strong could the nation survive, Federalists claimed. And the federal government could only be strong if it was able to apply taxes directly on citizens in a way that many states might not like....
Read entire article at CS Monitor
It was exactly this point on which the Constitution’s opponents focused, much like our current small-government party does today. They worried that the power of direct taxation would upend the dominance of the states, making them mere auxiliaries of a powerful national government. As a result, they sought a modification of this taxing power that still preserved the autonomy and even the primacy of the states.
In the Virginia ratification debates, for example, opponents of the Constitution sought an amendment that would allow the states themselves to requisition federal taxes, so that all money flowed though the states to the federal government in order to maintain states’ rights over taxation. Explaining the amendment to Thomas Jefferson (who was in France), the Federalist and Founder James Madison noted that the purpose of such a proposal was to “mutilate the system” by attacking its taxing power so that it could no longer “answer the purpose for which it was intended.” That purpose, in Madison’s view, was the creation of a government of national supremacy fit for a true nation.
The Constitution’s proponents saw quite clearly that the fate and character of the nation was at stake in the Constitutional debate, so they spoke more explicitly about the connection between a strong government and our national health than tea party proponents care to acknowledge. Only if the federal government was strong could the nation survive, Federalists claimed. And the federal government could only be strong if it was able to apply taxes directly on citizens in a way that many states might not like....