I suspect you’ll get a bit more than blank stares.
Unfortunately, those same ‘knowledgeable’ people would kick you in the teeth IF those ideals would ever be re-instituted again...for messing with those illegal/unconstitutional items THEY support.
How many pictures of those TEA Party rallies you remember with the blue/grey hairs’ signs of “Don’t touch *my* mediXYZ/SS/etc.”?? They match RIGHT up w/ the carpel-thumb-syndrome generation re: “’FREE’ education/grants”.
We, as a people, no longer have more than the IDEAL of Freedom. Most would *BEG* for the chains to be restored if had to live with the responsibilities of their choices. BEG, I say, if they WERE a Free people once more.
With all due respect to mom & pop, please consider this. As a consequence of the parents of many patriots not making sure that their now grown-up children were taught about the federal governments constitutional limited powers, such patriots do not understand the following.
Note that there has never been stopping the states from individually exercising their 10th Amendment-powers to start their own social spending programs.
In fact, a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified that Congress cannot appropriate taxes in the name of state power issues, the programs that you mentioned for example, essentially any issue that Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
”Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” - Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Also, if the states think that the feds can do a better job running social spending programs better then the states can (AHEM!), there has likewise never been anything stopping the states from amending the Constitution to grant the feds the specific powers to do so.
In fact, if Constitution-ignoring FDR and his corrupt Congress had successfully petitioned the states for amendments to the Constitution which granted the feds the specific powers that he needed to start his ”New Deal” federal spending programs, when we probably would not be having this discussion.