It was 100 years ago this month that the 16th Amendment to the Constitution officially became the law of the land. Since this is the one that authorized the federal government to implement a graduated income tax in the United States, you’ll understand why I say that February 3, 1913, was a very bad day for liberty.

One of the many complaints against King George in the Declaration of Independence was that “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

But the amount of colonists’ “substance” that was taken by British authorities was the equivalent of a gnat’s nibble, compared to what our rulers in Washington seize from us every day. I think it’s safe to say that without a graduated income tax — a key plank in The Communist Manifesto, by the way — there is no way that we would have the gargantuan government we face today.

By the time the income tax was imposed on us, the rules had already been rigged so the super rich could hide their wealth in foundations and family trusts. The income tax would keep most of us from ever hoping to compete with them, while giving government the funds it needed to offer a gullible public all of the bread and circuses it could want.

But it wasn’t just the legalization of the income tax that made 1913 a truly terrible year for freedom. That was the same year that the Senate foisted the Federal Reserve System on us. In the past century, its money-creation policies have caused the U.S. dollar to plummet.

Since the conspiracy to foist the Fed upon us succeeded (if you doubt that statement, read G. Edward Griffin’s monumental study, The Creature from Jekyll Island), the dollar has lost way more than 90 percent of its value. It now takes more than 20 Federal Reserve notes to equal the purchasing power of a single buck 100 years ago.

Yes, the dollar has lost about 95 percent of its value since the creation of the Federal Reserve. That’s quite a record. The situation can only get worse, since the Fed continues to pump out $1 trillion a year to help finance Obama’s out-of-control deficits.

Oh, and let me mention one more tragedy inflicted on our country back in 1913. In March of that year, Woodrow Wilson became  the 28th President of the United States.

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