Why MAGA Reactionaries Want To Revert To 1912

Why MAGA Reactionaries Want To Revert To 1912

By Robert Korczynski

November 6th 2026

The mainstream media routinely describes the Supreme Court and the MAGA Republican movement as conservatives, but on a standard political spectrum they are reactionaries. While radicals seek to sweep away traditional structures and to build entirely new systems, and liberals want to slowly change into what the radicals want today, moderates represent a mix of social issues, and conservatives want to maintain the status quo, reactionaries want to reverse the changes of history and restore a previous system. The MAGA Republican movement and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court are not conservative, they are reactionaries attempting to turn back the constitutional clock 114 years all the way back to 1912.

When Democrats hear the word reactionary, they almost always claim the movement wants to dismantle the Civil Rights Act or roll back mid-century social progress. This is a complete misinterpretation of the current use of the word. The true reactionary movement has no interest in twentieth-century cultural litigation, they are targeting three laws that were passed in 1913 that changed how the government was funded, that changed how the senators were elected, and that changed who could produce money. A MAGA reactionary legal and political strategy recognizes that to restore the original American Constitution, every single one of those 1913 changes has to go.

The first is the 16th Amendment ratified in February 1913, which established the federal income tax and led directly to the creation of the IRS. Originally marketed as a temporary "soak the rich" program that would isolate 99% of all working class families due to the initial deductions, it instead provided the federal government with an infinite, direct revenue stream independent of the states, which enabled the exponential growth of an unchecked federal bureaucracy. By loading the tax code with massive deductions under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act like the elimination of federal income taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security, the executive branch is systematically engineering a return to the pre-1913 status quo where Americans paid no taxes.

The second is the 17th Amendment, ratified in April 1913, which established the direct popular election of U.S. senators. Under Article I, Section 3 of the original Constitution, senators were chosen exclusively by elected state legislatures. This design was intentional. The Framers structured a bicameral legislature where the House of Representatives directly represented the immediate, changing passions of the general public, while the Senate was explicitly built to represent the institutional sovereignty of the states themselves. The six-year senatorial term was specifically engineered to isolate senators from popular public pressure, giving them the long-term stability needed to protect state governments from federal overreach and serve as a cooling check on the House. By shifting to a statewide general election, the 17th Amendment made it so that the senators no longer protected the states from federal overreach, instead their 6-year term still isolates them from the general public, but if they don't serve the state, who do they serve? They serve the ruling class of America that I call the American Oligarchs, and since all campaigns cost millions to get elected to Congress in the first place, all House reps and all senators end up serving no one else other than their corporate donors.

The third is the Federal Reserve Act, signed into law in December 1913, which shifted the control of money, credit, and national currency away from the strict constraints of the United States Constitution and into a centralized monetary authority. Under Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 and Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the original Constitution, the text explicitly mandates that the United States government alone holds the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and make nothing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. Despite its name, the "Federal Reserve" has nothing to do with the federal government of the United States; it is a private corporation that misleads the public by claiming to be a part of the federal government. The 1913 Federal Reserve Act initially maintained a gold backing requirement for its notes, concentrating monetary power into one central bank, which laid the groundwork for the subsequent 1933 confiscation of gold, and the ultimate 1971 slide into pure fiat currency, making a return to the pre-1913 gold-backed currency produced by the federal government of the United States a goal.

The reactionary justices on the Supreme Court and the MAGA Republicans in Congress and in the Executive branch are systematically dismantling the unchecked bureaucratic regulatory powers that were created in 1913 to restore a 1912 US Government: a country where the states control the Senate, a fake central bank cannot manipulate the currency, and the federal government lacks the ability to tax its citizens.

Conclusion

By executing a cohesive strategy across the Executive, the Treasury, the Judiciary and even the MAGA Republicans in Congress, the reactionary movement succeeded in implementing the One Big Beautiful Bill which removed taxes on Social Security for 88% of all Americans, and returned money to hard working Americans with no tax on overtime and no tax on tips, but everything else remains an ultimate goal. In essence, the long-term objective of this movement is to completely eliminate the IRS, to abolish the Federal Reserve, to reestablish the gold standard, and to restore U.S. senators to their original constitutional role, which was explicitly designed to represent the interests of the states against the overreach of the federal government. The alternative is what we have today after the 2026 midterms, where at least six Senate seats were flipped from Republican to Democrat based on the whims of the popular vote.

Citations

• Constitutional Milestones of 1913: Specific historical ratification dates and legislative timelines for the 16th Amendment (February 1913) and the 17th Amendment (April 1913) are cataloged by the National Archives Milestone Documents.

• Original 1913 Gold Standard and Reserve Mandates: The statutory 40% gold note cover requirement, the 35% deposit backing, and the historical preservation of the gold standard within the original Federal Reserve Act framework are detailed by the Federal Reserve History Archive and Hillsdale College Constitutional Studies.

• Constitutional Money and Coinage Powers: The explicit text of Article I, Section 8 and Section 10 governing federal monetary authority and state legal tender restrictions is maintained by the Heritage Foundation Guide to the Constitution.

• Federal Income Tax and Early Exemption Structures: The operational history of early 16th Amendment implementation, tax form tracking, and early exemption rates affecting less than 1% of citizens are detailed by Investopedia's History of U.S. Taxes and the Internal Revenue Service History Timeline.

• Legislative and Judicial Alignment Context: Comprehensive overviews regarding structural changes to the administrative state, agency limits, and judicial term impacts are tracked via the Brennan Center Court Challenges Tracker and Reform of the United States Senate.

• Modern Legislative Repeal Efforts: Joint resolutions introduced in the House of Representatives to formally repeal the 17th Amendment and return the selection of U.S. senators to state legislatures are archived on the Official Congressional Press Registry.