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Your entire post makes so little sense, I'm tempted to ignore it as the rant of someone who has no intention of engaging in rational debate. However, on the chance that you are open to discussion, I'll elaborate on one point and await a reasonable reply.

No, government can only pass laws protecting individual rights. You state military advancement ...

I stated that our government is exercising a just power ceded it by its citizens to secure their individual rights to life and property from foreign invasion. The purpose of the army is to protect each of our individual rights. In order to secure those rights, the army must be prepared to repel an invasion. To repel an invasion, they must have weapons capable of doing so. How effective do you imagine our army would be repelling an invader today using musket and ball? About as effective as the Iraqi army was stopping us? Probably less so. How is the army supposed to move from a musket and ball capability to one capable of defending our rights today? One way is to devise new weapons. One part of devising new weapons is to "research" them. There is nothing specifying how the government exercising its justly ceded power to accomplish that research. Empowering means they decide how.

If you can't make the connection between military research and the ability of the army to protect our rights, I have nothing left to discuss with you.

You missed the point of my response. The rationale that you started this discussion with, that government should do nothing that did not uphold individual rights, was the arguement I was making to each of your defenses.

Of course military dependancy is important, but you will find many on this site who follow your initial rationale to extremes and argue that there should be no standing army.

Seriously.

They read the Constitution in such a narrow way that when it says that Congress shall not budget for the military in no more than 2 year blocks that means that the Founders never intended the Federal Government to have a standing army, just that the Congress could raise an Army and support it for 2 years at a time.

That is the level of discussion that I must deal with each time I come into a discussion of Governmental spending. Frustrating, right?

The fact is that as a precept in the Declaration of Independance, Jefferson was making clear that Government should be something that is beholden to the constituency and not the other way around. He was saying that Government should support a people and provide them freedom rather than a people provide Government with largesse. He did not mean, and neither did Locke or Paine, that Government's only function was to directly support individual rights. It is a function of Government, but as you point out providing for common defense, organizing itself to be effective, and supporting the advancement of it's people as a whole are also functions of a Government.

Sometimes that means that the Government does things that are unpopular to a large minority of people. Sometimes that means that the Government does things that are unpopular to a majority of people. Does that mean that the Government does not have the right to do them? If the people gave the Government that right, you better believe it does.

Emminant Domain.

Does the Government have the right of Emminant Domain? The writer of the Declaration of Independance believed so and was very convinced of that right of the Federal Government after the Louisiana Purchase. How does that square with your beliefs? How can the concept of Emminant Domain be reconciled with Government's only duty being to uphold individual rights? How could Jefferson write the Declaration of Independance and yet support such a notion?

The same way he could write "All men are created equal" and still own slaves. Idealism and Pragmatism must both be employed in Governance, for a Government of one without the other is doomed from the start.