Medary.com

Those few of you who were paying attention in high school may have learned that the United States is not in fact a "democracy" but instead a "federal republic." Now, those two words may have an alien, or even a frightening ring to many people today. In fact, the founders of the USA were as concerned about the excesses of pure democracy as they were about the excesses of the English monarchy that they rebelled against.

Randy Barnett, a professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University, offers in the Wall Street Journal a modest proposal of a Constitutional amendment to restore the "federal" part of our federal republic:

Section 1: Congress shall have power to regulate or prohibit any activity between one state and another, or with foreign nations, provided that no regulation or prohibition shall infringe any enumerated or unenumerated right, privilege or immunity recognized by this Constitution.

Section 2: Nothing in this article, or the eighth section of article I, shall be construed to authorize Congress to regulate or prohibit any activity that takes place wholly within a single state, regardless of its effects outside the state or whether it employs instrumentalities therefrom; but Congress may define and punish offenses constituting acts of war or violent insurrection against the United States.

Section 3: The power of Congress to appropriate any funds shall be limited to carrying into execution the powers enumerated by this Constitution and vested in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof; or to satisfy any current obligation of the United States to any person living at the time of the ratification of this article.

Section 4: The 16th article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed, effective five years from the date of the ratification of this article.

Section 5: The judicial power of the United States to enforce this article includes but is not limited to the power to nullify any prohibition or unreasonable regulation of a rightful exercise of liberty. The words of this article, and any other provision of this Constitution, shall be interpreted according to their public meaning at the time of their enactment.

Click on the WSJ link above for more explanation. It seems like a good place to start for me, especially the part about abolishing the income tax in Section 4, and the "no, really, we mean it" language in Section 5.