Posted on 09/28/2011 9:34:48 AM PDT by free me
"Q: So in your view those things fall outside of general welfare. But what falls inside of it? What did the Founders mean by 'general welfare'?
"A: I don't know if I'm going to sit here and parse down to what the Founding Fathers thought general welfare meant.
"Q: But you just said what you thought they didn't mean by general welfare. So isn't it fair to ask what they did mean? It's in the Constitution.
"A: [Silence.]
"Q: OK. Moving on.... "
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
it’s ‘promote’ NOT ‘subsidize’! should have been the answer
Again, you brought up the SPLC, NOT me!
OTOH. You have defended the nativist and eugenicist, John Tanton, along with his creations, CIS, FAIR and NumbersUSA. You're stinking up the place.
You ignore Perry’s historic opposition to Bush’s immigration policy and lax border enforcement because it’s convenient for you.
I agree that the book's handling of the issue was quite good. Better than good actually.
I don’t know why he’s coming off so clueless now.
It makes me wonder if he is the actual author or if the work was done by a ghost writer.
Those kinds of demonstrations happen a lot more regularly in your home state than in Texas!
Hey ‘free me’ I was just on the forum where you were touting Christie and berating Perry. (not too successfully) My...you do get around!
I always suspect people who are too zealous about a position or candidate.
BTW last I heard a President is an administrator not an interpreter. Scholars could debate “general welfare” all day long.
Perry’s only lapse in judgement was agreeing to an interview by the New Republic...imagine that ...of all Liberal propaganda rags!
Hey “firefox” I have never touted Christie for president. Check my tagline for more info.
You seem to only be “skimming” posts and articles judging by the egregious mistakes you are making when posting about them.
The interview you remarked on was with “the daily beast” not the “new republic” for instance.
But you’re right Perry has shown bad judgement. One more reason he must not be our nominee.
When you get a chance try telling us why you don’t like NJ colleges accepting illegals but making them pay out of state rates in accordance with federal law in NJ, but it’s OK for TX to accept illegals and subsidize them with tax dollars.
TIA
In my previous post, I quoted Thomas Jefferson, who authored the Declaration of Independence, a document which laid out the principles and philosophy underlying that Constitution. Although he was not in the country at the time of the framing, the following statement from him summarizes well his support for the Constitution:
". . . we should then have only to include the North in our confederacy, which would be of course in the first war, and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: & I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self government." - Jefferson to James Madison, 27 April 1809
And, from Congressman Paul's web site, the following words from Jefferson on the "general welfare" meaning to America's Founders:
Limited vs. Universal Powers
"I say... to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty-making power as boundless: If it is, then we have no Constitution. If it has bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which that instrument gives." --Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1803. ME 10:419
"The construction applied... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States," and "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof," goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to [the General Government's] power by the Constitution... Words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:385
"To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, "to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare." For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on National Bank, 1791. ME 3:147
"Aided by a little sophistry on the words "general welfare," [the federal branch claim] a right to do not only the acts to effect that which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think or pretend will be for the general welfare." --Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1825. ME 16:147
"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on National Bank, 1791. ME 3:148
It is an established rule of construction where a phrase will bear either of two meanings, to give it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts of the instrument, and not that which would render all the others useless." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on National Bank, 1791. ME 3:148
"The general rule, in the construction of instruments, [is] to leave no words merely useless, for which any rational meaning can be found." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on the Tonnage Payable, 1791. ME 3:290
"For authority to apply the surplus [of taxes] to objects of improvement, an amendment of the Constitution would have been necessary." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:354
"[If] it [were] assumed that the general government has a right to exercise all powers which may be for the 'general welfare,' that [would include] all the legitimate powers of government, since no government has a legitimate right to do what is not for the welfare of the governed." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1792. ME 8:397
"Our tenet ever was... that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1817. ME 15:133
"If, wherever the Constitution assumes a single power out of many which belong to the same subject, we should consider it as assuming the whole, it would vest the General Government with a mass of powers never contemplated. On the contrary, the assumption of particular powers seems an exclusion of all not assumed." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1814. ME 14:83
"I hope our courts will never countenance the sweeping pretensions which have been set up under the words 'general defence and public welfare.' These words only express the motives which induced the Convention to give to the ordinary legislature certain specified powers which they enumerate, and which they thought might be trusted to the ordinary legislature, and not to give them the unspecified also; or why any specification? They could not be so awkward in language as to mean, as we say, 'all and some.' And should this construction prevail, all limits to the federal government are done away." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1815. ME 14:350
"This phrase,... by a mere grammatical quibble, has countenanced the General Government in a claim of universal power. For in the phrase, 'to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare,' it is a mere question of syntax, whether the two last infinitives are governed by the first or are distinct and coordinate powers; a question unequivocally decided by the exact definition of powers immediately following." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1817. ME 15:133
I assume you saw my link to the article about a public college in New Jersey openly deciding to accept illegal immigrants and offer them in-state tuition, right?
I still haven’t found Chris Christie putting a stop to that.
He covered it in his book. Refusing to answer a misleading question is an answer. Not answering when you say you aren’t going to answer is an answer. And you can see the bias of the reporter when they pull crap like posting a transcript where they repeat their question so they can leave an empty space for the candidate, as if the questioner gets to decide whether a guy should have answered his question better or not.
I already debunked that nonsense as you know.
?
Indeed for without these being formost to protect then everything else in the article is pretty much a non-issue. We are defined by our borders....which are completley open and unprotected. And this administration and the globalist agenda is taking down our sovernity....we have yet to see what will remain...but it already is not the america the founders were so very proud and honored to protect...and too mnay in this country don't want it to be.
There is no denying that illegals probably cost what you claim but that does not mean most of them are on the welfare teat. My guess is less than half are which would work out to 17,500 per which sounds about right.
All I am saying is that the majority do not come here for the welfare. The flow of illegals is determined by the relative economic growth rates between the US and Mexico.
If you are concerned about what the constitution means you should be quoting John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton, the two greatest constitutional scholars the nation ever produced, not Jefferson.
In these 200+ years under our written Constitution, the principles and ideas underlying our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution which 11 years later was designed to protect unalienable, Creator-endowed rights of individuals have been under assault, but perhaps never as much as today.
The Founders' passion was for individual liberty and the means to protect it through a written constitution which would "govern both the governed" and those who were delegated limited powers in government. The Constitution's separating, dividing, limiting, checking and balancing of certain delegated powers was intended to leave the sovereign power in the hands of the Constitution's "ONLY Keepers" (Justice Story), not in the hands of ANY branch of the government it structured--including the Supreme Court.
We, in retrospect, are in a position to appreciate the wisdom of their work and to question their reasoning, as revealed in their writings and their various positions.
On the other hand, we also are able to see how their warnings about dangers to liberty might develop, depending on the ideas of Executive, Congress, or Supreme Court members during a particular time period in America's history.
Already, we have seen abuses by each of the three branches, which tend to reveal the wisdom of the Founders' limitations on power in each branch, including that of the Court.
As to Jefferson and his fear of the idea that a Supreme Court such as one which might exist within the next year or so might endanger liberty in violation of the Framers' intent, how can one doubt that possibility, given the political climate of 2011?
From StreetLaw.org, come the following Jefferson quotations on the subject:
"2."But the Chief Justice says, 'There must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.' True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our Constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force."
—Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:451
3."But, you may ask, if the two departments [i.e., federal and state] should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best."
—Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:47
4."The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
—Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51
5."To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
—Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
6."In denying the right [the Supreme Court usurps] of exclusively explaining the Constitution, I go further than [others] do, if I understand rightly [this] quotation from the Federalist of an opinion that 'the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide]. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow . . . The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
—Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:212
In evaluating Constitutional interpretation, the views of Jefferson, considering our political Party positions today, especially in light of O'Reilly's new Lincoln book, we might re-read Lincoln's letter to Henry L. Pierce and Others:
Springfield, Ills, April 6, 1859
Messrs. Henry L. Pierce, & others.
Gentlemen
Your kind note inviting me to attend a Festival in Boston, on the 13th. Inst. in honor of the birth-day of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. My engagements are such that I can not attend.
Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago, two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them, and Boston the head-quarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.
Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then assuming that the so-called democracy of to-day, are the Jefferson, and their opponents, the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.
The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.
I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have perfomed the same feat as the two drunken men.
But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.
One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.
And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success.
One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard--the miners, and sappers--of returning despotism.
We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.
Your obedient Servant
A. Lincoln--
Source for this reproduction of the letter is
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