AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

This is simply a red herring developed by a group of exceedingly greedy Scrooges.

And where does the constitution use the word "dollar"?

The courts have the power to decide what the law means. They did so. You are ignoring the constitution ican.

The 16th amendment was passed when a graduated income tax was ALREADY declared constitutional by the courts.

In my mind, impartiality is the very essence of judging and of being a judge. A judge does not look to his or her sex or racial, social, or religous background when deciding a case. It is exactly these factors that a judge must push to one side in order to render a fair, reasoned judgment on the meaning of the law. In order to be a judge one must attempt to exorcise himself or herself of the passion, thoughts, and emotions that fill any frail human being. He must become almost pure, in the way that fire purifies metal, before he can decide a case. Otherwise, he is not a judge, but a legislator.

And weren't a good number of those same founders still around long after that time. That would have given them ample opportunity to denounce such a development and time to seek to have it abolished.

Modern American Conservatism/Classical Liberalism
(adapted from Wiki)

Modern American Conservatism (MAC)/Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1], laissez-faire liberalism[2], and market liberalism[3] or, outside the United States and Britain, sometimes simply liberalism is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government.

Let it be recollected that the proportion of these taxes is not to be left to the discretion of the national legislature, but is to be determined by the numbers of each State, as described in the second section of the first article. An actual census or enumeration of the people must furnish the rule, a circumstance which effectually shuts the door to partiality or oppression. The abuse of this power of taxation seems to have been provided against with guarded circumspection. In addition to the precaution just mentioned, there is a provision that "all duties, imposts, and excises shall be UNIFORM throughout the United States.''

Before the 16th Amendment, they taxed population--i.e., headcount-- uniformly throughout the United States.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Russell Kirk and The Conservative Mind

It is a striking historical coincidence that both the People's Republic of China and the modern American conservative movement were born a little over 50 years ago, the PRC in 1949 with the coming to power of Mao Zedung and modern conservatism in 1953 with the publication of Russell Kirk's masterwork, The Conservative Mind.

Chairman Mao famously declared that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. While that may be true for certain regimes in certain circumstances, such political power cannot be sustained permanently, for it requires ever larger barrels and ever more guns. Political power that depends exclusively for its survival upon force inevitably degenerates into military power and leads to an authoritarian and usually a totalitarian state. Chairman Mao's aphorism in fact denies the reality that lasting political power grows not out of a gun, but out of an idea.

The central idea of The Conservative Mind, upon which American conservatism is essentially based, is ordered liberty. It is a blending of the sometimes contending requirements of the community and the individual, of individual freedom and individual responsibility, of limited government and unlimited markets.

Kirk described six basic "canons" or principles of conservatism:

* A divine intent, as well as personal conscience, rules society;
* Traditional life is filled with variety and mystery while most radical systems are characterized by a narrowing uniformity;
* Civilized society requires orders and classes;
* Property and freedom are inseparably connected;
* Man must control his will and his appetite, knowing that he is governed more by emotion than by reason; and
* Society must alter slowly.

The Conservative Mind was an impressive feat of scholarship--a synthesis of the ideas of the leading conservative Anglo-American thinkers and political leaders of the late 18th century through the early 20th century. The work established convincingly that there was a tradition of American conservatism that had existed since the Founding of the Republic. With one book, Russell Kirk made conservatism intellectually acceptable in America. Indeed, he gave the conservative movement its name.

However, the intellectual pedigree of American conservatism goes much farther back in time than the 18th century. In a subsequent book, Russell Kirk wrote that the roots of American order were first planted nearly three thousand years earlier.

Kirk used the device of five cities--Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and Philadelphia--to trace their development. The roots first appeared in Jerusalem, with the Hebrew perception of a purposeful moral existence under God. They were strengthened in Athens, with the philosophical and political self-awareness of the Greeks. They were nurtured in Rome, by the Roman experience of law and social awareness. They were intertwined with the Christian understanding of human duties and human hopes, of man redeemed. They were joined by medieval custom, learning, and valor.

The roots of American order were then enriched by two great political experiments that occurred in London, the birthplace of parliaments and the guardian of common law, and in Philadelphia, where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were written. The miracle of Philadelphia was that the delegates were able to resolve, for the most part, the conflicting demands of freedom and order. They created a true national government but not an absolute government. They designed something new under the political sun--a federalism which carefully enumerated, separated, and restrained the powers of the national government.

The income tax was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court near the end of the 19th Century.

wikipedia, as adapted by Foxfyre wrote:

Modern American Conservatism/Classical Liberalism
(adapted from Wiki)

Modern American Conservatism (MAC)/Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1], laissez-faire liberalism[2], and market liberalism[3] or, outside the United States and Britain, sometimes simply liberalism is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government.

Your phrase "adapted from" is a true wrist-slapper: The original Wikipedia article on classical liberalism, uncredited by Foxfyre, does not contain the words "Modern American Conservatism" or anything of the kind. You took this article, "adapted" it by adding the words "Modern American Conservatism (MAC)/", and then cited it as authority that the two ideologies are the same.

Oh, wait a minute: I'm getting a sense of -- excuse my French -- déjà vu here. Have you pulled this shtick earlier? Tell me it isn't so!

It isn't the definition that's hard to understand. It's the claim that classical liberalism and modern American conservatism are the same ideology. Apparently the Wikipedia authors found it hard to understand, too -- which is presumably why they don't identify classical liberalism with American conservatism of any flavor, and why you had to "adapt" their definition to make it say what you wanted it to say, but didn't.