I came across this diary by Pericles today, and in the process of composing a reply, realized I had a full diary on my hands and not just a comment. Please join me below the fold for a little pontification on how the same quotes used today in favor of the ideology of suppressing government power were originally written in favor of creating it, and a bit of rumination on why wealthy corporations might want to keep Federal authority in check. As an added bonus I'll draw a line from the Anti-Federalists of the late 18th Century through the Confederacy, and into the modern Tea Party, their "Lost Cause" is older than you'd think.
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-Thomas Jefferson
Even in the time of the Founders, corporations behaved like the sociopathic creatures they are.
There were a large number of wealthy men who supported the Revolution because they saw the opportunities for wealth to increase its power in the vacuum created by the absence of the power of the Crown (an unheard of thing in those days). To protect that power vacuum in the interest of exploiting it, they fought against the adoption of the Constitution, in history/civics class you may have heard of them as the "Anti-Federalists". Just as the Koch Brothers do today, they preached the message that a strong Federal government would weaken freedoms in the States, and that Federal government must be kept in check to prevent further tyranny.
When the Anti-Federalists lost that fight, they worked within the system to weaken Federal power at every turn, culminating eventually in the movement for Secession and the Civil War. After Lee's surrender at Appomattox, those who fought for the power of wealth went back to working from the inside, creating the political climate which led to the Gilded Age, the Roaring 20s, and after a few decades of losing ground, to the Reagan Revolution and its miscreant offspring of today.
Hundreds of years, and the same ideology permeates the Corporate sector, if the power of government is weakened, the power of money is increased. If the quotes of the Founders that populate Tea Party rhetoric were to be read in context, they are all refutations of the Anti-Federalist position that creating a Federal Government with any real power would be a sure-fire way to tyranny, and as Pericles pointed out today they fit today's climate perfectly with the simple switching of "government" and "corporation".