Big government for whom?

• Position: Distilled Zinn - Constitution and government - Brief article

April 1999

The Constitution set up big government, big enough to protect slaveholders against slave rebellion, to pay off bondholders, to pass tariffs on behalf of manufacturers, to tax poor farmers to pay for armies that would then attack the farmers if they resisted. ... Big enough to use the armed forces to clear Indians off their land, to put down labor uprisings, to invade countries in the...