Posted on 09/12/2009 2:59:31 PM PDT by GoldStandard
That according to brilliant constitutional scholar MSNBC's David "biased in favor of facts" Shuster, who matter-of-factly insists the "general welfare" clause in Article 1 of the Constitution "unambiguously authorizes" social welfare spending like "social security, Medicare, veterans' care, etc."
Shuster made his comments today shortly after 4:30 p.m. EDT in reaction to Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), who recently suggested that Tenth Amendment grounds could be a means of opposing as unconstitutional certain Democratic health care proposals.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated.”
—Thomas Jefferson
I quite agree, but Anne needs to explain why she supports fedgov drug prohibition, which depends on the New Deal era Wickard decision. I'd like to hear Scalia's justification for supporting Wickard, as well.
Arguing that the preamble of the Constitution creates an obligation of the government is like arguing that aspirin is to create headaches because it says “for headaches” on the bottle.
The preamble of the Constitution, to promote the general welfare, is not to argue that the document is to provide a welfare state. It is to say that the following treaty made among its participants inherently promotes the general welfare by providing for a living government.
Once again, we must remind ourselves that the government has ONLY the powers enumerated in the Constitution. We as human beings naturally have rights because we are all given life and souls by the God Almighty and no man can take away the rights that God has naturally given us. We can only set them aside with mutual consent to accomplish a larger good of a peaceful nation and that is what the Constitution tries to do.
The Congress has no right to legislate anything besides that which we gave it in the Constitution or in the Amendments that give the Congress more powers. (I’ll get back to that). If we ripped up the Bill of Rights and burned it, the Congress would still not be allowed to regulate speech or guns or any other of a number of things simply because that power is not granted to the Congress.
Indeed, Jefferson, in his letters to Madison, pointed out that people would see the Bill of Rights as an excuse to expand the government and thought there should be no such amendments -at all-. Madison agreed in theory, but argued that politically he could not get some states on board without the Bill of Rights. Now, we have let ourselves twist the bill of rights into meaning that those are our rights, and even worse, the idea that more amendments give us more rights, when the truth of the matter is that we had all the rights we needed in the original document.
Just look at what all the more modern amendments say: “The Congress shall have the power to enforce this by appropriate legislation”, or something to that effect. Thus, every amendment passed, especially in the 1960s, exist to take rights away from us, not grant them, in the name of supposedly establishing more rights.
One last thing, for those liberals that say the Constitution is a “living” document. I see the Constitution as a Treaty among the sovereign states, hence the name of my site (the Treatyist). So, the Constitution is a treaty, a contract among the people to form a government. If that government can change the terms of the Treaty that gives it life, then that is the basis of all tyranny. Only we, the people, can give the government more powers, and that only through the Amendment process. Anything else isn’t even breaking the law, it is breaking a deal among all the states of the union... its breaking a contract. If the government is allowed to break contracts and its own law, why can’t everyone else?
I only point this out because the liberals went after Bush and, well, dare I say it, Nixon, because they both asserted executive powers. Yet, one might argue, what’s the point of being constitutional when you intend to break the same document in congress. Liberals don’t care about the Constitution, its only power. Like all revolutionaries, they turn the instruments of the state against itself, to destroy it.
Sorry for the long post.
That’s an excellent point. While many of us who are conservatives would argue that drugs should be banned, its pretty clear from the Constitution that the Federal government has absolutely no right to ban drugs. States can do it, if their own Constitutions allow it, but not Uncle Sam. When President Bush went after California for their Medical Marijuana decision, [and mind you, I’m not a drug user at all], I just cringed and thought “Come on George, can you act like a Conservative on this...” Still, I’d rather have a third term of W over our present Fuhrer any day of the week.
And that, of course, is the exact intent of the Constituion: to limit the power of the Federal Government. It was written as a restrictive document. Those old, dead white guys knew what they were doing.
If only those in Washington had a clue!
The buffoons in Congress don’t like being handcuffed the way they handcuff our military. That rat hole on Capitol Hill needs a good fumigating.
When programs bankrupt the country, destroy jobs, destroy lives of the citizens, then those programs do not benefit the “General Welfare” of the country. That argument is nonsense.
Can anyone find an email address for this POS? Shuster deserves to hear from people!
ah ... poor fella ... he’s lashing out because HE lost his first amendment rights to freedom of speech by anchoring on MSNBC.
It is not liberals who don’t support the 10th. I see people here who don’t support it when it comes to the issue of life..
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bttt
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