I saw your post with the Georgia Constitution, I actually applaud that sort of thing. Desperately few conservatives read the state constitutions.
"An educated public can certainly be intrinsic to the "general welfare" of the Nation."
So can food. So can healthcare. So can a basic level of pay.(All things progressives seek to achieve) But the Founders didn't give us an unlimited omnipotent government, that's what they set out to desperately prevent. So they gave us a "general government" with only a limited few items on a short leash. General governments don't really do much, contrary to popular myth.
You claim to have read the United States Constitution, I'm surprised the Constitution's limited culture eluded you. The unlimited culture of the Georgia Constitution couldn't be more obvious. Specific welfares for specific constitutions/governments that have unlimited cultures, and general welfares for the general government with its limited culture.
Then from your excerpt from the US Constitution:"
Quoting that one line out of context is bad faith. The whole enumerated powers as a bloc tells a story of what the Constitution is. They are not grants of omnipotence.
First, I disagree with your notion of "specific welfare", finding that to be mincing words. Thomas Jefferson wrote at length about the importance of an educated population and how that was one of the few things that guaranteed self-governance. He went on to say that there are too many instances of families who could not afford higher education for their children nor had they the time, patience, or faculties to educate their children. He proposed bills numerous times in Virginia in order to establish public schools.
Food does not bring an education, yet an education can certainly bring food. Healthcare will not bring education, but and education will bring healthcare. In keeping with the general welfare, it is prudent to fund whatever provides the best leverage for all people at the lowest cost. Education is an enabler, unlike those you list.
The limited culture of the government did not escape me, I can assure you. Yet, the Constitution does empower Congress to make laws that are not prohibited. If Congress were restricted to making only laws included in the Constitution's enumeration, it would not have seemed necessary to include the Bill of Rights. After all, how could anything in the enumeration of powers affect the possession of firearms or the free exercise of religion? It seems pretty clear to me that lawmaking in general was expected to go outside of the enumerated powers so the phrases I highlighted really are general purpose in nature. (They wrote more compactly in those days.)
I clearly see my viewpoint enumerated in the whole block. You are taking a stance that is similar to the way people want to tie both clauses of the Second Amendment together when they claim it empowers only a national guard.
The Founders did not list at lot of things in the enumeration of powers, just like they omitted quite a lot from the Bill of Rights. There was a great deal of debate about these very things. They finally concluded that nobody would forget the sting of tyranny, and that the states were going to cover everything else anyway. Of course, the states were assumed to be the seat of power when they wrote the Constitution.
Sure enough, schools are established by the Constitutions of all fifty states, not the Federal government.