The Country Will Survive

Remembering history makes it easier to understand current issues. What we are experiencing today is not new. I am reading a book on the Whiskey Rebellion. The whiskey tax was the first tax on an American produced product. It appears David Hume, a Scottish Philosopher argued that key to a nation's economic prosperity is concentrating wealth in the hands of the few people who can use it to finance ambitious projects.

Alexander Hamilton found in Robert Morris an embodiment of Hume's ideal. Morris or his people headed Finance, Foreign Affairs and War in the new government. The financier controlled all real power in Congress as well as the Continental Army.

To Morris the war effort should be focused on paying interest to the bondholding class. Tight cash forced choices between paying soldiers and paying creditors. Creditors came first: Morris suspended army pay and prohibited state legislatures from paying their own soldiers, insisting states send all money to Congress, to be distributed as he saw fit.

Morris blamed the states for failing to tax the mass of ordinary people. He wanted a direct federal tax, payable by the people to congress. These taxes were to be collected by federal officers. Thus Hamilton's whiskey tax on 1791. Washington not only went along with this tax he used Federal troops against the citizens of the United States. It wasn't until following the Civil War that we had Posse Comitatus.

Our country started off pretty screwed up and the country will survive this one.