Fine and mostly agreed.
Shouldn’t the defense issue be narrowly defined though?
What we’ve had is an enormous expansion of government by broadly defining the Commerce Clause, no? It has interrupted state’s rights and in the end the rights of the people.
If the defense issue is broad and interpreted by those ignorant of the benefits of freest trade, then you get sugar tariffs or subsidies to ADM for “national security” reasons.
You could even imagine an America in which our politicians made it impossible to industrialize or for the population to move to cities because our agricultural base was a “national security” issue, no?
In the end they were wrong, although many argued that you cannot have a nation without a massive agricultural population. Today we have the lowest farm population ever and grow the most ever.
the Defense issue should not necessarily be narrowly defined, but it should be clearly defined.
Yes, the commerce clause has been abused terribly, particularly with regards to supposed interstate commerce. I would hazard a guess that 75% of what the feds do regarding interstate commerce is utter BS.
But they are answerable to us. We can sweep the worthless bastards out of office, and I recommend we do so. IOTW, I’m not in favor of creating a unelected international or even interstate supervisory entity that has authority over interstate commerce. I am, however, in favor of electing those who would kill off the executive branch’s Dept of Commerce, and who would devolve the labyrinth of nonsensical restrictions.