The 16th, 17th and 18th Amendments were all Woodrow Wilson incarnations. Wilson who as a Princeton academic thinking himself superior and refined to the previous Theodore Roosevelt rough riding brutes was able to ride a short wave of populism to bring American society up to the ‘standards’ of European monarchies. He also steered America into its first world war.
Wilson’s air and belief of superiority was not only false but self-deceiving. He was not aware of the human condition that the Founders were so keenly astute. In age of wireless radio, of telephones, automobiles, skyscrapers, motion pictures and other modern era miracles, Wilson thought then as many do today that human nature was fundamentally altered.
The 18th was repealed but the 16th and 17th slowly encroached on American freedoms and government institutions until we have a centralized state today with 50 subsidiary administrations. The latter in itself is doesn’t ‘sound or seem’ so bad but for the unintended consequences of an irrelevant 10th Amendment from which federal government encroachment is strengthened.
The combination of the 16th and the 17th Amendments gave our socialist power brokers the tools they needed to radically alter the American idea.
It wasn’t Roosevelt that started this prolonged transformation into a socialist state, it was Wilson. Roosevelt was merely a tactician whereas Wilson was the progenitor but in reality he was a dupe. a very unwise indeed stupid man who believed his own lies about himself.
And a hundred years later, the Statists continue to deny our nature as they attempt to "fundamentally transform" these once United States. They're doing a bang up job of it. Only a few hundred labor camps will necessary for hold-out Constitutional conservatives.