Why Is Libertarianism Wrong?

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/libertarian.html ^

[A.J.Armitage]

And again, you've managed to claim that the general welfare clause has no value.

I never said that. I mere pointed out what value and meaning it does have.

And it's not a clause. It's a part of the lay and collect taxes clause, as simply quoting it in full proves to any reasonable person.

According to you, everything must be enumerated. The "common defense" clause is meaningless, only a standing army (2 years) and navy are legal. In your view, we can't have an air force, satellites, or national missile defense because the phrase "common defense" doesn't cover them and they aren't enumerated.

Those are, I think, considered to be "covered" by the army as used there (after all, it included the cavalry), even though they're separated for command purposes. If it really bothers you, you can start a petition drive to get an amendment passed.

That's simply wrong.

It's also not what I said.

Just as the common defense clause authorizes unenumerated items such as national missile defense, so to does the general welfare clause authorize unenumerated government programs.

Then why include an enumeration that can only confuse? And why call the "real" meaning absurd?

Or maybe they didn't even know the real meaning. We had to wait around for geniuses like you to point out that they wrote an incoherent document and didn't even know what ordinary English words mean. Goodness. How did we ever get started as a nation with such dunces for leaders? If they were that stupid, it's a wonder George Washington didn't say "retreat" when he meant "charge".

[xm177e2]

You've proven they can pass laws necessary and proper for the laying and collection of taxes. Point?

The Congress shall have 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

No, I've proven Congress has the power to raise taxes to pay debts, provide for the common defense, and the general welfare. "The general welfare" means Congress can do pretty much anything to better the health, happiness, or prosperity of our country, which would include welfare state government programs like Social Security. Congress can do pretty much ANYTHING it wants, so long as they can claim it will make the country better (and what lawmaker claims his law is going to harm the country?)

[Southack]

"I never said that. I mere pointed out what value and meaning it does have."

I don't see how that you can think that you've described what power that the "general welfare" clause has. You seem to have written it off as conveying absolutely no meaning or power.

Also, pay attention to the lay and collect taxes as well as pay debts clauses. Note that our Constitution makes no mention of which taxes to lay and collect or of which debts that can be paid. I mention those things because it is clear that our Constitution empowers government with unenumerated powers, which is the only reasonable way to read the "common defense" (air force, national missile defense) and "general welfare" (social security, soldiers pensions) clauses.

[A.J.Armitage]

"The general welfare" means Congress can do pretty much anything to better the health, happiness, or prosperity of our country, which would include welfare state government programs like Social Security.

No, they can lay and collect taxes to better the health, ect, by paying for the other stuff listed.

Congress can do pretty much ANYTHING it wants, so long as they can claim it will make the country better (and what lawmaker claims his law is going to harm the country?)

So the Tenth Amendment means that only states are allowed to intentionally harm the public, and nothing more? Yet somehow I doubt hack will accuse you of giving a clause no value, even though you've done just that.

[higgmeister]

Here is the tenth again for your support.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to
the states respectively, or to the people.

This means that individual statements were written.
If the specific power was not identified as belonging
to the the Federal Government or identified as withheld
from the Federal Government, then it belongs to the
states or to the people.

This limits Federal Power to only the specific items
clearly defined in the U. S. Constitution and any
item that is vague or ambiguous, such as General
Welfare, belongs to the States or the People.

Power grabbers be damned!

How can we make them see that Is means Is,
just as night follows day!
 

[A.J.Armitage]

I don't see how that you can think that you've described what power that the "general welfare" clause has. You seem to have written it off as conveying absolutely no meaning or power.

I don't see how you think it's somehow a test of my interpretation (which is, lest you forget, the interpretation of the people who wrote it) that I make it a grant of power, i.e., that I agree with you. I have no intention of making it anything other than it is: the justification for the power to tax, just as promoting the progress of science and the useful arts is the reason for the power to grant patents and copyrights. I don't have to ascribe anything more to it and I don't want to, because that's not what it says.

it is clear that our Constitution empowers government with unenumerated powers

Quite the contrary. It's clear that it does no such thing. It gives the government a few powers and the power to do things necessary and proper to the other things. Calling your debunked position "clear" won't change the reality of the situation. Your person interpretation is at odds with the plain meaning of the text, the other clauses in the same document, and the later statements of the authors (and not just while they were trying to get it ratified). You took the wrong side. Get over it.

which is the only reasonable way to read the "common defense" (air force, national missile defense) and "general welfare" (social security, soldiers pensions) clauses.

Your "only reasonable way" makes large portions incoherent. Why grant other powers? In paticular, why grant the power you claim was granted over the whole country over an area "not to exceed ten miles square"? And why reserve powers not granted to the federal government for the states when there are no such powers?

[RamsNo1]

Libertarianism is wrong because it is pro-choice, period!

[A.J.Armitage]

For that amendment to be more than an inkblot, there have to actually be powers not delegated, which, alone, would require my interpretation to save the Constitution's coherence. And they accuse me of not giving a clause meaning.

Historical note: the person who wrote that amendment (and the particular Federalist Paper I quoted above) was the leader of the centralizing faction at the Convention. He wanted to give Congress the power to repeal state laws. If there were anyone at the Convention who wanted that much power for Congress, it would've been him.

[Southack]

"Quite the contrary. It's clear that it does no such thing."

Ah, but there's the rub: our Constitution does convey upon the federal government some unenumerated powers.

For instance, the power to tax is granted, but left unenumerated are which taxes and excises can be granted.

The power to pay debts is granted, but which debts to pay (or not - see Southern debts of 1865) are left unenumerated.

Likewise, the power to provide for our common defense is left unenumerated. Otherwise today's national missile defense and air force would be unConstitutional.

So it follows that the power to provide for our "general welfare" is also an unenumerated power because which programs for our general welfare are likewise unenumerated.

[Southack]

"And why reserve powers not granted to the federal government for the states when there are no such powers?"

If only there were no such powers, then I might have to agree with you, but that's not the case.

The Supreme Court held that slavery was not encroached upon by the general welfare clause due to states rights in Dred Scott.

Likewise, it took a Constitutional Amendment to ban alcohol over state opposition.

Of course, gambling was also ruled to be unencroached by the general welfare clause.

The Tenth Amendment clearly conveyed the right to secede to states, as well, so one would be hard-pressed to claim that the "general welfare" clause conveyed UNLIMITED power to the federal government.

But one can easily see that the general welfare clause conveys some power, contrary to your views...

[Sandy]

Old thread you might like:
The "General Welfare" Clause. What Does It Really Mean?

[Eagle Eye]

Congress can do pretty much ANYTHING it wants, so long as they can claim it will make the country better (and what lawmaker claims his law is going to harm the country?)

If that is the case, then every other article is without use.

That's the exact opposite of what the founders wanted.

Common sense dictates that the founders did not labor crafting a document that clearly limits federal power only to have a small phrase that effectively undoes everthing else.

Using your reasoning, NOTHING is prohibited if it can be claimed to promote the general welfare. Nothing becomes sacred and the Bill of Rights become meaningless.

Interpretations as your have helped bastardize the concept of a constitutional republic that was to the present system that, in many ways, is more oppresive than what prompted the colonists to revolt.

[takenoprisoner]

But one can easily see that the general welfare clause conveys some power, contrary to your views...

And what power might that be?

The anti-federalists argued against the inclusion of the "general welfare clause" into our Constitution because it could be potentially be abused and mis-construed as unlimited powers.

Madison responded to them that the general welfare clause was merely a “general phrase” which was explained in detail by the sentences following it, enumerating the specific powers granted to Congress. Madison argued that the idea that the term “general welfare” would take precedence over the specific limitations(the 17 listed below the phrase) he described as “an absurdity.(FP41.

As we all now know, the anti-federalists against this phrases insertion were right all along, and Madison was dead wrong.

Today Congress and proponents of the nanny state rely heavily upon this phrase to do anything they deem necessary inspite of the enumerated powers prescribed just below the general prhase...which was merely an introduction to the list of enumerated powers to follow. At least that is what Madison inferred.

Of course, the anti-federalists were right on this one. Their fears that's it's inclusion would have the potential for abuse has been realized today.

Thank you Mr. Madison...not that "absurd" afterall now was it?

[gjenkins]

bump

[WindMinstrel]

Ah, but there's the rub: our Constitution does convey upon the federal government some unenumerated powers.

For instance, the power to tax is granted, but left unenumerated are which taxes and excises can be granted.

The power to pay debts is granted, but which debts to pay (or not - see Southern debts of 1865) are left unenumerated.

Likewise, the power to provide for our common defense is left unenumerated. Otherwise today's national missile defense and air force would be unConstitutional.

So it follows that the power to provide for our "general welfare" is also an unenumerated power because which programs for our general welfare are likewise unenumerated.

Your arguement is fallicious. Those examples you sited were of specifics, while the powers granted were generalized. That's not playing fair. It's like me allowing my kids to listen to music, then punishing them for listening to country.

[headsonpikes]

RE: the 'general welfare' clause.

You seem to assume that 'welfare' in this context means 'welfare' in the Rooseveltian hand-out sense. I submit that this is an error.

What is now called 'welfare' was once called 'charity', or 'relief'.

The use of 'welfare' in this regard is the consequence of distorting the Constitution for a political purpose. IOW, you've got it back to front. We call it 'welfare' because of the legal fiction.

It is an extraordinary stretch, even a reductio ad absurdum, to claim that the clause in question gives unbounded powers to Congress to enact whatever laws they please, so long as they can be construed as beneficial to some national 'purpose' or 'general welfare'. If one construes the meaning so broadly, then we might as well have NO Constitution, since Congress would be limited only by their powers of rhetoric.

[spunkets]

Here is something on the Welfare Clause. Any exposition on what the clause means and allows, requires that one choose apriori the proper role of gov't. It requires that one choose between Freedom/capitalism and authoritarian/socialism any mix of the two as guiding principles to determine meaning and justification will necessarily be arbitrary and contain contradictions.

As can be seen from what I posted the founders failed to expound and limit it's meaning. It was left to the future to do so. The founders were proponents of Freedom/capitalism, but they had various tendencies to authoritarian rule. This is another defacto compromise to finalize the document and get it signed.

*************************
BOOK REVIEWS

Madison on the "General Welfare" of America: His Consistent Constitutional Vision

Leonard R. Sorenson

Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995, 172 pp.

Article I, section 8 of the Constitution confers upon Congress certain enumerated powers and a potentially more sweeping authority to provide for the general welfare, a goal also set forth in the Preamble. For proponents of a limited central government, the General Welfare Clause has been a source of great mischief. Interpreted elastically by constitutionalists of the "living document" persuasion, the Clause has helped serve up a gourmand’s feast of government programs, regulations, and intrusions that would have been unimaginable to the Framers.

Forty-three years ago, William W. Crosskey of the University of Chicago attempted to set the record straight–-to uncover the original meaning of the Constitution and shut down the revisionists who had robbed the document of its stability and permanence. Alas, Crosskey’s tome, Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States, published in two volumes in 1953 with a third volume issued posthumously in 1980, only muddied the waters. Worse still, Crosskey managed to tarnish the image of James Madison, until then revered as a paladin in the struggle against encroaching government.

Leonard R. Sorenson, a professor of politics at Assumption College in Massachusetts, has undertaken to rescue us from our rescuer. According to Crosskey, Madison was duplicitous: Publicly, Madison proclaimed that the General Welfare Clause is merely a synonym for the enumerated powers considered collectively, not an independent source of power. But privately, Madison believed that the General Welfare Clause delegates to the Congress plenary legislative power; that the enumeration of specific powers served simply to allocate and assign governmental functions, establish certain procedural limitations, and illustrate some of the powers deemed to be necessary and proper. This alleged difference between Madison’s public and private persona is at the root of the so-called Madisonian contradiction.

Sorenson’s thesis, based primarily on Federalist No. 41, is that Madison regarded the enumeration as defining the objects entailed within the general welfare and the other general clauses that make up the Preamble (i.e., justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, and liberty). But those objects are the broad ends or purposes of the Constitution, not just means or powers. Therefore, states Sorenson, Madison understood the general terms of the Preamble to enlarge the dominion of government beyond the enumeration itself, although not to confer plenary power. Madison’s public position, ascribed to him by Crosskey, was that substantive powers are defined by specifying their number, kind, and application. On the contrary, Sorenson’s explanation is that (1) Madison perceived the Preamble of the Constitution as prescribing a limited number of limited ends; (2) the enumeration defines those ends more precisely; (3) the general welfare and other clauses that make up the Preamble vest particular powers beyond the enumeration, but only to accomplish the limited ends; and (4) the particular powers thus vested can be identified only through an examination of the enumerated powers themselves, in their relation to the authorized ends.

If that sounds recursive, it is intended to be. Sorenson maintains that the general ends or objects of the Constitution, as specified in the Preamble, define the purposes of the enumerated powers qua powers; but the enumerated powers, in their end-defining dimension, provide more specific meaning to the general purposes. Sorenson concludes that the purpose of the enumeration is to define the limited number of objects or purposes that fall within the idea of the general terms. Thus, a proposed new power must promote an object already authorized; that is, the new power must be derived from a general term, which means that it must also have an immediate and appropriate relation to an already enumerated power.

Perhaps an example from Sorenson will help. The Alien and Sedition Acts, under which aliens could be detained or deported, permitted prior restraint of speech and the press. It could be argued that Congress’s authority to pass the Acts was entailed within the enumerated power to suppress insurrections–-a particular means of providing for the common defense, domestic tranquility, and the general welfare. Madison rejects that formulation on the ground that suppressing an insurrection involves subsequent punishment, not prior restraint; the enumerated power neither explains nor defines any of the general terms in a manner that permits of censorship.

Sorenson weaves his way through The Federalist Papers (principally Nos. 39-44), dissecting and analyzing the text with diligence, erudition, and fastidious attention to detail. His work product should and perhaps will have an impact upon our courts, but there are significant obstacles to overcome.

First, the battle over the General Welfare Clause was all but lost six decades ago in United States v. Butler (1936) and Helvering v. Davis (1937). In Butler, the Court struck down the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which taxed processors in order to pay farmers to reduce production. Although invalidating the statute, the Court adopted the Hamiltonian view (almost in passing) that the General Welfare Clause is a separate grant of congressional authority, linked to and qualified by the spending power. Sorenson perceives correctly that virtually all governmental activity involves the expenditure of money; accordingly, there is little difference between Hamilton’s view and Crosskey’s position that the General Welfare Clause represents a plenary grant of power.

Any doubt remaining after Butler as to the scope of the General Welfare Clause was dispelled a year later in Helvering. There the Court defended the constitutionality of the 1935 Social Security Act, requiring only that welfare spending be for the common benefit as distinguished from some mere local purpose. Justice Benjamin Cardozo summed up what has become controlling doctrine ever since: "Nor is the concept of the general welfare static.... What is critical or urgent changes with the times."

Justice Harlan Stone struck the final blow in Flemming v. Nester in 1954, holding that questions concerning the propriety of conditions imposed on spending, and questions concerning the generality of the benefits, were for the Congress to resolve–-subject to judicial invalidation "only if the statute manifests a patently arbitrary classification, utterly lacking in rational justification." However disheartening such cases may be to advocates of a narrower and more constraining General Welfare Clause, they do reinforce the urgent need for quality research from competent scholars like Sorenson.

The second hurdle for Sorenson is that his scholarship may be more widely referenced by historians than by jurists. Curiously, Sorenson chose as his principal theme the refutation of Crosskey. Writing long after the Supreme Court had done its damage, Crosskey’s influence has been marginal. He is cited but three times in Supreme Court majority opinions, and in only one instance has the cited material implicated (tangentially) the General Welfare Clause. To be fair, Crosskey indisputably provided intellectual ammunition for the bad guys and, in that sense, Sorenson’s effort to disarm him (and them) is an important part of the ongoing struggle to secure a more propitious climate of ideas.

Third, the focus of that struggle for ideas may have shifted in light of the Supreme Court’s 1995 salvo in United States v. Lopez. The explosion of federal power under the expansive rubric of the Commerce Clause–-arguably more harmful than any aggrandizement traceable to the General Welfare Clause-–has at last been scrutinized by the Court. And if the Commerce Clause is ever restored to its rightful role–-that of ensuring the free flow of trade among the states-–the next campaign may indeed be waged against the Necessary and Proper Clause. Distended by the Court in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), that Clause now allows Congress to employ means in exercising its powers that are merely convenient--neither necessary nor proper. So, while welcoming Sorenson’s attack on the modernized General Welfare Clause, one should not be surprised if it is stalled by the allocation of scarce intellectual resources to more exigent projects. At a minimum, friends of liberty will surely find Sorenson's portrayal of Madison more congenial than Crosskey’s.

Proponents of a government constrained to exercise only its enumerated powers should not be discouraged if progress is gradual and halting. Sometimes, in order to effectuate radical change without rending the social fabric, we may have to content ourselves with incremental challenges to long-established doctrines. Sorenson has undeniably supplied more than his fair increment. By tracing to Madison a view less conducive to swollen government than the view embraced by the New Deal Court and its successors, Sorenson enrolls on the side of limited government. He is part of the crusade to circumscribe the reach of the feds–-even if his vision of Madison would not bind Congress as tightly to the original enumeration as old-line anti-federalists might desire.

Robert A. Levy Potomac, Md. ******************************

A FR thread on the topic

[spunkets]

"What is now called 'welfare' was once called 'charity', or 'relief'."

Exactly, the founders knew not socialism. Else they would have eloborated on this. Their concerns regarding pilage, justified by votes cast, was addressed by requiring certain qualifications to vote. The quals were removed by the con artists and thieves that twisted the meaning of welfare. This new meaning of what welfare is, requires Freedom and responsibility are cast out and authoritarian rule and nannyism establish.

Welfare was transformed into ruin. In reality, the clause now reads, "and for the general Ruin of the United States."

[Conservative til I die]

Yes. Libtertarians are much like the Marxist totalitarians in that they delegate the descision of what is and is not force, and what is and is not libertarian to a small elite class, namely themselves.

A libertarian government could never work because the ellite few have a narrow and rigid ideal of what libertarianism is, and in reality, in a country of 275 million, with 50 governorships, 535 Congressmen, 9 Supreme Court Justices, and countless local governments, it is likely that some will choose to stray from the libertarian ideal, and in a libertarian world, that would not be allowed to happen in the first place.

[A.J.Armitage]

Ah, but there's the rub: our Constitution does convey upon the federal government some unenumerated powers.

No, it doesn't. Repeating a false assertion will not make it true, especially since it's already been debunked.

For instance, the power to tax is granted, but left unenumerated are which taxes and excises can be granted. The power to pay debts is granted, but which debts to pay (or not - see Southern debts of 1865) are left unenumerated.

Jumping from a power that can be exercised in one way or another to the particular exercise of that power as a separate power, as if a general power to tax doesn't include the power to impose tarrifs, is rank sophistry. I would be embarrassed to say something that stupid. You seem to have the problem you accuse libertarians of: you want to get in the last word. The problem is that you happen to be wrong, and instead of admitting it with some dignity, you try to drag on a debate which, frankly, I've already won.

Why don't you just admit it doesn't say what you thought it said? Is admitting you were wrong that hard for you?

Likewise, the power to provide for our common defense is left unenumerated. Otherwise today's national missile defense and air force would be unConstitutional.

I already debunked that.

So it follows that the power to provide for our "general welfare" is also an unenumerated power because which programs for our general welfare are likewise unenumerated.

There's no "general welfare power" in the first place, and therefore no choice over how to use that power.

If only there were no such powers, then I might have to agree with you, but that's not the case. The Supreme Court held that slavery was not encroached upon by the general welfare clause due to states rights in Dred Scott. Likewise, it took a Constitutional Amendment to ban alcohol over state opposition. Of course, gambling was also ruled to be unencroached by the general welfare clause. The Tenth Amendment clearly conveyed the right to secede to states, as well, so one would be hard-pressed to claim that the "general welfare" clause conveyed UNLIMITED power to the federal government. But one can easily see that the general welfare clause conveys some power, contrary to your views...

Let's be honest: you're making a fool of yourself.

If you think there's a "general welfare power", you logically have to agree with xm177e2 in his claim that Congress can do anything it claims is in the general welfare. To say that Congress has the power to do what it thinks is in the general power, but not the power to do a particular thing which it thinks is the general welfare (and not even the ones listed in the Bill of Rights, but ones that have been ruled to be state matters) is simply a contradiction. It doesn't say lay and collect taxes to provide for the general welfare, except as it pertains to slavery, alcohol, gambling, ect. If a "general welfare power" is granted by the strange and awkward construction (if it's intended for that purpose, that is), "lay and collect taxes... to provide for the general welfare", it's the whole thing; general welfare stands without immediate qualification. If it's not granted by that clause, it's not granted at all. "General welfare" grants everything, or nothing. As you yourself have proven, it does not grant everything.