I was reading my handy little pocket Constitution today, (thank you B J Lawson), and thought I would compose a post concerning this marvelous document. Lets begin with the following:
Article I - The Legislative Branch / Section 8 - Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Now I'm no scholar of constitutional law, but is there any need for constitutional law anyway? Was the document not written in simple language, for the common man to be able to read and feel secure with his natural rights? It's true, in some ways the generations of the founding period were better educated than those today. No, there weren't public schools for all, but most, even farmers isolated from much of society, owned and read books written during the age of enlightenment, and Greek classics, books which led to the thought which created the mindset of revolution and liberty. No, A degree and years of study led by, most likely biased, professors, isn't needed to read and understand the US Constitution; You need simply to read the words as written, and with a little study of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, along with understanding of word meanings during the period, you should be able to understand the meaning of the document well.
You will surely note from the above section, Power is granted to Congress, and then powers are enumerated. Obviously, these enumerated powers, define the intended role of Congress, and as well, limit the authority of Congress. The "general Welfare" clause is one of the most controversial clause's contained within this section. Not the "good and welfare" clause, as John Conyers, a member of Congress, who is supposed to vote on law, based on the Constitution, assumes it to be. Perhaps he should first learn what the document actually says and means. What does this clause mean? As Congress and the courts now interpret it, it includes any legislation which can be construed in some way to be for the general welfare of the people? Or perhaps should it be read, as pertaining to the general welfare, based on the enumerated powers listed after the clause. To begin maybe we should see how welfare was defined around this period? Webster says, "Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government" (Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828).
James Madison, the father of the Constitution said “With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” Madison also is quoted, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce." Another Madison quote of 1792 reads "If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America." Madison in Federalist No. 41 "...it will be proper to review the several powers conferred on the government of the Union; and that this may be the more conveniently done they may be reduced into different classes as they relate to the following different objects: 1. Security against foreign danger; 2. Regulation of the intercourse with foreign nations; 3. Maintenance of harmony and proper intercourse among the States; 4. Certain miscellaneous objects of general utility; 5. Restraint of the States from certain injurious acts; 6. Provisions for giving due efficacy to all these powers." and later "For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power?" Perhaps Madison's draft of the 9th Amendment should have been used "The exceptions here or elsewhere in the constitution, made in favor of particular rights, shall not be so construed as to diminish the just importance of other rights retained by the people; or as to enlarge the powers delegated by the constitution; but either as actual limitations of such powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution."
In Federalist No. 83, Alexander Hamilton said: ...The plan of the [constitutional] convention declares that the power of Congress…shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority was intended..."
Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Johnson, 1823, said "The capital and leading object of the Constitution was to leave with the States all authorities which respected their own citizens only and to transfer to the United States those which respected citizens of foreign or other States; to make us several as to ourselves, but one as to all others. In the latter case, then, constructions should lean to the general jurisdiction if the words will bear it, and in favor of the States in the former if possible to be so construed." Another Jefferson quote in the Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798 "The construction applied... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States," and "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof," goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to [the General Government's] power by the Constitution... Words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument." Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Branch Giles, 1825 "Aided by a little sophistry on the words "general welfare," [the federal branch claim] a right to do not only the acts to effect that which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think or pretend will be for the general welfare." Thomas Jefferson in his Opinion on National Bank, 1791. "They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817, "Our tenet ever was... that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money." Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1815. "I hope our courts will never countenance the sweeping pretensions which have been set up under the words 'general defence and public welfare.' These words only express the motives which induced the Convention to give to the ordinary legislature certain specified powers which they enumerate, and which they thought might be trusted to the ordinary legislature, and not to give them the unspecified also; or why any specification? They could not be so awkward in language as to mean, as we say, 'all and some.' And should this construction prevail, all limits to the federal government are done away."
Even after the founding period, the spirit was still alive for some time; Davey Crocket while serving as a member of Congress supposedly made a speech concerning a bill providing money to a naval officers widow, containing the following "I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.
President Franklin Pierce in a veto message in 1854 said, "I shall not discuss at length the question of power sometimes claimed for the General Government under the clause of the eighth section of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," because if it has not already been settled upon sound reason and authority it never will be. I take the received and just construction of that article, as if written to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises in order to pay the debts and in order to provide for the common defense and general welfare. It is not a substantive general power to provide for the welfare of the United States, but is a limitation on the grant of power to raise money by taxes, duties, and imposts. If it were otherwise, all the rest of the Constitution, consisting of carefully enumerated and cautiously guarded grants of specific powers, would have been useless, if not delusive. It would be impossible in that view to escape from the conclusion that these were inserted only to mislead for the present, and, instead of enlightening and defining the pathway of the future, to involve its action in the mazes of doubtful construction. Such a conclusion the character of the men who framed that sacred instrument will never permit us to form. Indeed, to suppose it susceptible of any other construction would be to consign all the rights of the States and of the people of the States to the mere discretion of Congress, and thus to clothe the Federal Government with authority to control the sovereign States, by which they would have been dwarfed into provinces or departments and all sovereignty vested in an absolute consolidated central power, against which the spirit of liberty has so often and in so many countries struggled in vain. In my judgment you can not by tributes to humanity make any adequate compensation for the wrong you would inflict by removing the sources of power and political action from those who are to be thereby affected. If the time shall ever arrive when, for an object appealing, however strongly, to our sympathies, the dignity of the States shall bow to the dictation of Congress by conforming their legislation thereto, when the power and majesty and honor of those who created shall become subordinate to the thing of their creation, I but feebly utter my apprehensions when I express my firm conviction that we shall see "the beginning of the end."
President Grover Cleveland in 1887 vetoing a bill providing for drought relief, "I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevelent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people.”...
“The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve thier fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.”
These are simply a few examples, of which there are many, which make clear the intended role of the federal government, limited and defined. We have almost certainly passed beyond the point from which we can ever return to the constitutional government intended and contracted with the people, without another revolution and re-organization. If all of the unconstitutional laws were to be struck down at once, society would be in disarray. However, we do need to make incremental changes to reduce the power of the federal government over our lives and liberty. If government needs to be kept at it's current levels, transfer power to the states where possible, and where constitutionally it should be. At the state level, move power to the counties when possible, and in the counties move it to the local level. Bring the power back closer to the people, where it can be more closely monitored and checked when it becomes abusive. Educate yourself. Don't rely on being taught by others who will bring a certain bias to any information passed on, but learn for yourself; There is a vast amount of information available. Learn what liberty truly means, liberty in it's classical sense as understood by the founders, and ask yourself, how much liberty has be usurped from the individual. We have become serfs to a bloated bureaucracy which controls or legislates almost every activity in our lives. This is not being free. With the massive spending programs and expansion of the federal bureaucracy in the last several years, which you have allowed by your silence, you have either mortgaged the future of your children and grandchildren to an even higher level of servitude than you have experienced, or began the downfall of the great experiment called The United States of America. Unconstitutional entitlement programs are un-fundable at this point, wars are continually waged which have little to do with our sovereign security, federal departments are ruling over every minute detail f your lives, and revenues will never be able to keep up. President’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has already began speaking of doubling tax revenues as a short term fix, without drastic cuts. The International Monetary Fund in July, basically stated that the US is bankrupt and can not meet it's financial obligations as currently organized; Either massive tax increases or massive cuts in spending need to be accomplished to possibly recover from the current debt and unfunded liabilities. Is this the world you wish to leave to your children? Life is going to be rough any direction we take, but the time has come to pay the bill. Vote wisely, not just this year, not just in 2012, but for the remainder of your lives. The time for apathy has past, learn the history, learn the problems, and learn how we can begin to restore America!
Amendment 9: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
“Government is instituted to protect property of every sort.... This being the end of government, that alone is not a just government which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.… That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.” (James Madison, The Complete Madison, p. 267.)
