[Jim W N]

To add to these comments...most government activity or lack thereof should be at the state and local level where the people have direct control. Most of the Cabinet should be abolished along with all of the executive regulatory agencies that act as the extra (un) constitutional fourth branch of government subverting the separation of powers by giving the President power to legislate.

Again a corporate will and wisdom is needed, supplied only, I think, by another spiritual Great Awakening.

[LibertarianInExile]

“Sometimes I think libertarians secretly want to bore through the powers we delegated to the government in the Constitution. The IRS needs to be abolished. The best way I’ve heard to fund a limited government is a sales tax. Tariffs would do the same thing, I suppose, but it also a tax.”

The only thing the federal government should be doing in the way of overturning state law is in enforcing its supremacy insofar as its constitutionally derived powers are concerned. Maybe—and only maybe—it should be involved in ensuring the federal proscriptions on certain rights are not encroached upon by state action, but that is a big if, as every time it’s gotten involved in that, it’s spread out to encroach on those rights instead of protecting them.

And tariffs worked for years to support the federal government, and make sense given its powers of customs and border control. Sales taxes, depending upon how they are imposed, could conceivably give the federal government the power to control every business in the country. Tariffs, on the other hand, should work fine if the government is of a constitutional size...not a leviathan.