Child: Bro, you're not free.
Elephant: I am too.
Child: But what about that rope there?
Elephant: Oh, that's always been there. I'm fine.
Posted on 07/04/2024 7:23:00 AM PDT by Who is John Galt?
Everybody should read the anti Federalist papers. Patrick Henry for one expressly objected to the “General Welfare” clause and pointed out there were no express limits to it.
That’s exactly what Jefferson is getting at here. Jefferson also expressed the view that the single biggest oversight in the Constitution was the lack of a limitation on the federal government’s ability to borrow money. He was of course, 100% correct about that.
Future read
I wonder whether the Louisiana purchase was undertaken under general welfare reasoning
He also took exception to the treaty power. His main objection was that there was no specified penalty for Federal officers violating Constitutional limitations.
I'm with him on that one. See tag line.
“General welfare” in the preamble is only a statement of the intent of the Constitution and is not an enumerated power delegated by the Constitution to the feds by the states and the people.
The enumerated powers in the body of the Constitution are listed mostly in Art. I, Sec. 8.
Proper application of the Constitution is as written and originally understood and intended.
Just attended a reading of the Declaration of Independence at the local court house (an annual event for many years organized by the local chapters of the DAR and the SAR). Listening to the offenses of which King George was accused made me think how trivial many of them were compared to what we allow the federal government to do nowadays. What would the Founding Fathers think of present-day Americans?
This was posted on FR already back when it was published. Search still works!
Exactly correct— the “General Welfare” has been stretched into TOTAL Welfare delivered (doled out) to the undeserving and non-taxpaying non-productive elements of States signed to the “Compact”.
Jefferson was NO friend to a National Bank, conceived and executed by Alexander Hamilton, ironically shot in a duel by Burr who was pursued by President Jefferson for true insurrection against the Constitutional powers. Arrested him- trying to create his own country in... Mexico!
From the get go- Jefferson and Hamilton did not get along well (for that matter neither did John Adams and Hamilton over a different part of the banksters plots against the States).
This clip from Hbo’s “Adams” is a well written discussion of the “Bank” between Jefferson (newly returned from Amb. to France) and Hamilton- it is a saver- whom is beholden to whom?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy7FJJ_ud84
The greater the debt the greater the foreign credit!!!!! Yeah right.
And this later between Adams and Hamilton over foreign policy and.. armies!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaWBs46USqE
In memory RIP of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams who both passed away... on July 4th,1826! Two giants who renewed their friendship over ripped asunder political evilry between them. Two FOUNDERS, and... geniuses.
Note that the first secession was threatened by New England states- which they have long ago neatly forgotten. The first real destructors of our Constitutional Republic. As the Progressives of New England have been since before Woodrow Wilson.
Yes, Jefferson of all people believed they had fought and labored to have independence and to have a national government of LIMITED powers.
The founders generation knew that their problems arose witin a system - the British system of the day - where they was few limits on the powers of the king and his government, even with his parliament.
Well spoken, Verginius! My prior post concerns two of the giants of our Founders who composed the Declaration of Independence, and Jefferson (one year before his death, today in 1826) re-affirming the relationship of Virginia to the Constitution and the limits accepted by limited affirmation of “roads and canals” built by the Federal govt- and ONLY that.
Look indeed to the vast wasteland imposed by a profligate and detached fedgov of unionized employees of agencies created whole cloth by... political parties. Immigration out of control to bring in— stupid labor not familiar with our Constitution at all and whose main task is to pay into the Socialist Security system set up by FDR (and his “second Bill of Rights speech is one for the archives as the road map to our current destruction, for certain).
It is up to those who love the Founding and this Country, as
“Vox populi panis et circi late est”.
Be well,Verginius Rufus.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.”
—Marcus Tullio Cicero
What they did not bring up in this clip is that the Southern states - being far wealthier - had paid off their debts. The Northern states had not. So nationalizing the debt effectively meant the Southern states would be subsidizing the Northern states. It started right from the very beginning. The Northern states were looking to squeeze money and power out of the Southern states from day one. This is what came to a head in 1860.
Bfl
When he agreed to buy Louisiana from Napoleon, whose money did he spend, and from whom was it borrowed?
Yes indeed— the “redistribution of wealth” in the form of taxes to “pay a war debt” incurred by loans made by the National Bank was to put all the States back in debt within the Compact of the Constitution. It was un Constitutional then and... stil is. Northern states sucking the pockets of the self- sufficient and paid up Southern— that is how it started. Keeping in mind that New England still had slavery when Jefferson came back from his ambassadorship to France.
The mercantile Hamilton (who was a bastard from the Caribbean trying to “be” somebody) had his hands all over this. The Bank did much to ruin our Constitutional Republic, as it does now. Chartered by Congress, and the 1913 Fed was renewed in 2013 for another 100 years— by obamaumao the first (a creation of the Saud/Muslim Brotherhood).
I think this version has been 'updated' more recently by the National Archives, by the addition of typos ("SOLEMN DECLARATION AND PROTECT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF VA" - see their web site).
;>)
Certainly La purchase and other territorial expansion was the largest domestic policy expansion with the greatest rewards of all time. I love a quote I read years ago, the past is a foreign land.
Heh... practicing in case I ever get my dream job of discussion board administrator.
Child: Bro, you're not free.
Elephant: I am too.
Child: But what about that rope there?
Elephant: Oh, that's always been there. I'm fine.
"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
Attributed to Lesley Poles Hartley (1895-1972), prologue to The Go-Between (1953)
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