Banking Conspiracies, Income Tax, etc.

I got an inquiry from two of my sons asking what I thought about a video they'd seen asserting that the levying of income tax was illegal, and in one case that it was the product of a banking cabal who's pulled one over on the American public. I was a little surprised because this kind of assertion used to the sort of far-right conspiracy paranoia that groups like the John Birch Society pedaled in my youth. I realized that the lack of real grounding in history on our school system and the increasing skepticism that any institution anywhere is telling the truth conspire to make it easier to front an idea that seems plausible on the surface to a broader audience. If the international Jewish Banking conspiracy is a new idea to twenty-somethings it's in part because they don't get much history to measure it with.
That's scary. As I pointed out to the boys, it was the ability to convince the German public that there was an international Jewish conspiracy in the 30s that was betraying the Fatherland that allowed the Nazis to take power. Scary people always need 'enemies' to defend against in order to build their power. So I think my responsibility includes trying to foster deeper critical thinking about these slickly produced presentations. One of them was on YouTube---and looked like Ken Burns put it together. So for openers, I looked for information on the idea that the 16th Amendment and its "income tax" authority was not legal. Google Books has a telling entry if you google "16th Amendment legend".
I appreciated both its concrete statements and its tone. More to follow.