Posted on 11/12/2009 5:49:13 AM PST by Huck
These are times which try men's souls.
ML/NJ
very very interesting
ping for later
The Constitution very clearly says that the feds may only COIN MONEY. They now print fiat paper currency and the Court let is slide. They broke faith.
Unfortunately this represents a typical misrepresentation of the General Welfare clauses, both in meaning and intent.
The term “general welfare” was about the general welfare of the United States as an entity. The two times it was written it was in a preamble.
The first, in effect, said that “we offer this Constitution to secure the general welfare of the United States.”
The second said that “the following enumerated powers (and only these) allow the Congress to attend to the general welfare of the United States.
Few and delegated is both the original meaning and original intent of The Constitution.
"Coin Money" specifically meant that the government could establish mints where citizens could bring gold or silver bullion and the mint would, in exchange for a fee, stamp it into recognizable disks of known weight and fineness. It did not give the government the power to buy scrap metal and create little disks of it with impressive monetary stampings on them.
ML/NJ
What it represents is an accurate prediction of precisely how the phrases and the Constitution generally would be interpreted. And it's a plain reading of the language.
Few and delegated is both the original meaning and original intent of The Constitution.
Good intentions aren't a sufficient safeguard against designing men with access to unlimited power, as history has demonstrated over the last 200 years of experiment. If their intent was to give the national government few and defined powers, they failed miserably, as was predicted, and as has now been shown in practice.
Article 1, Sec 8 states:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;
Clearly then, Congress is given power to a)law and collect taxes b) in order to provide for the general welfare.
Health care? Why not? Congress has power to lay and collect taxes. For what end? The general welfare--the particular in pursuit of the general. That's not even a misconstruction--it's the plain language.
Never mind actual misconstructions, like the commerce clause. But even that sort of thing was predicted--that the Supreme Court as interpreters of the Constitution would gradually and consistently expand national power--that application of comon law principles---e.g., stare decisis---would enable the high court to mold the powers of government.
You toss necessary and proper (implied powers), general welfare (broad mission/scope), and supremacy (unaccountable)all together and you get the big stinking pile of crap we have today. Sure as your born.
With me?
Now along come some smart people who propose that a)three lions is not sufficient--we need more lions and b) we have a new cage guaranteed to hold the lions within their bounds.
And now let's say, you the observor, note a few lion sized holes in the cage walls. Bigger even then lion-sized--large enough for several lions to jump through and escape.
You think it's sufficient to say that the builders of the cage intended that it keep the lions in? Don't you think it matters, with life and limb on the line, whether or not the cage is properly built to secure lions?
Here's what James Madison said about your logic:
Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the 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,'' amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.Courts are supposed to interpret the law according to the intent of the people who drafted the law, not some possibly valid interpretation of the words but opposite to that intent.Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms ``to raise money for the general welfare. ''
But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? 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? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter. [The Federalist No. 41 excerpt]
ML/NJ
And Madison has been proven collossally wrong on the point.
I'm not sure how Madison could be wrong about his intent, which is obvious from what he wrote. As I said in my first reply on this thread, the courts pretty much have done whatever they have wanted to do regardless of the sometimes very specific words in the Constitution.
BTW, it isn't only Madison who was "wrong" in the sense you suggest. Amendments and laws seem to take on a life of their own soon after all the people responsible for their creation have died. This is because such people would be quite vocal in saying, "That's not what we meant," if they were still around. So e.g. the court waited until all the 14th Amendment drafters were dead before they came up with the doctrine of "incorporation." (where all the Bill of Rights amendments, except the second, are thought to apply to the states too)
ML/NJ
He was wrong in arguing that the Constitution would be interpreted the way he supposedly intended. The antifederalist essays correctly predict the way it would in fact be interpreted. Madison may have intended to cage the tiger, but in fact he let it run free. In that respect, he was quite as wrong as one can be. That’s another reason I call the Constitution a gubmint boondoggle—like most gubmint programs, it fails to do what it was intended to, and often ends up doing the opposite.
We don’t know their real intent. Maybe they intended for incorporation to come later.
ML/NJ
ML/NJ
ML/NJ
Not really. Implied powers was aleady working its magic in the first congress, during the Washington administration. Then you had McCulloch v Maryland. What about the nullification crisis of the 1820s? It was a mess all the way up to the Civil War. And since. Mostly gradual, sometimes in spurts, but always in the wrong direction.
Most conservatives have no problem at all with the Controlled Substance act. The point is that the Constitution is full of errors, invitations to expanded power, and it has shown itself to be that way for centuries now. They are unrestrained, except by the whims of the populace. That's not republicanism.
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