Is the US headed towards a socialist government?

[kandrathe]

A status quo where the vast majority of people were vastly less free than today.

It is clear they knew it was wrong, even in 1776. The fact remains that they were unwilling to dissolve the fragile union newly forged, which inevitably resulted in a civil war. Even Britain had to be tricked out of supporting the slave trade.

Obviously, none of them. However, my point is that the history of the US has trended strongly from less liberty for all to more, not the other way around, as you seem to believe, or at least imply on a regular basis.

The Mormons never pursued their rights via the court system, so we'll never know. They were ostracized, and treated poorly by their neighbors, until they finally carved out their own niche in SLC. No one chased them, or exiled them.

By establishing a strong executive, with an army, a banking system, a public debt, and all the pragmatic trappings of real government, including the powers of taxation and regulation that you complain so loudly about. That is to say, he (and many others, of course) diverted the course of US government from a Jeffersonian experiment to the nation you see before you.

Even then, in the beginning, taxation was limited. It was the 16th amendment that was the largest fraud ever practiced upon any nation that doomed the citizens of the US into perpetual servitude. See the ruling of the US Supreme Court in the case of Pollock v. Farmer's Loan and Trust Co., 157 US 429 (1895).