Been thinking about what happened in France...

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It is true that several members of the Congress have interpreted both constitutional welfare clauses as permission to disguise any number of intended laws as providing government assistance to the citizenry simply because they want or need such assistance. U.S. Supreme Court Associat Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1833 that this interpretation wasn't considered a grant of general legislative power to the federal government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_W ... ted_States . The contemporaneous interpretation of the clauses never included such intention, but rather, that all U.S. citizens (general) be taxed and benefited equally (welfare) by any law adopted by the Congress. The Constitution affirmed this idea through its original capitation clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_ ... egal_basis .

Don't you see, you benefit if government helps people integrate into society? It benefits everyone because they are given the opportunity to contribute their unique gifts that could enrich your life and make it better.
Why is it people cannot understand the concept that government, when done properly, helps people?

Government can be evil or it can be good. When it's evil it harms a state, when it is good it helps it and most can agree Americans have been tremendously helped by their government and it can still help us if we believe it can. If we get all negative and start hating government, it won't do us any good as a people. You control your own destiny. If you believe government is evil, it will be.
If your only ambition is to use government to inflict pain and suffering on others, government can become that but it won't be in your best interest because it causes people to be so angry and to rise up against you.

I do. And, hey, I have stated elsewhere on Wrong Planet that I receive U.S. Social Security Administration SSI disability benefits (though technically, SSA benefits are invested individual-worker contributions, not redistributed taxes). So, yes, I benefit from the current scheme.

However, my post was simply a correction to your stated interpretation of the constitutional welfare clauses. Such clauses were never intended to justify welfare of the government-assistance kind. As a side note, the Congress acted almost immediately after its creation to begin violating the Constitution by creating pensions for Revolutionary War service members which, while clearly would have been prohibited, was (and is) a very good idea.

My only goal was to explain legal history where the interpretation you reiterated was proved false in 1833 by Supreme Court Justice Story. I do wish that members of the Congress would learn that lesson.

The government has a duty to keep people from crossing the borders who might be a threat to our national security but at the same time, one of the government's duties is to promote the general welfare inside the United States. It simply means government helps us and it is one of the primary functions of the US government. Many people benefiting from the general welfare are not in this country legally. You know, America has a repugnant history with that very thing, bring people in and use their labor and we still do it. They just happen to be in this country illegally. Why not just do it ourselves?

People can dance around what the Preamble says all they want and the USSC isn't infallible. Whoever put it there did so for a reason and they want us all to prosper or they simply would have left it out. Pretty much it says keep the citizens well and protect us from outside threats. You cannot leave part of it out just because it doesn't fit with your personal ideology. Might as well just follow your own rules in that case, because you don't wish to go by what the government has laid out.

I agree. But, I find no ability to do so under the federal Constitution whether it is for illegal aliens or citizens. Let’s remember that states may do so if they choose where their constitutions allow. Even if they don’t allow it, amending state constitutions is vastly easier than the federal Constitution. Not too many years ago, states were the authorities from which people who needed government assistance received it. I would have no problem with the federal government requiring state governments to provide this kind of assistance. Most states used faith-based groups and wealthy individuals to bear the burden voluntarily, and such a scheme worked. Where it gets confused in when the federal government assumes authority which it doesn’t have. At that point states and their private groups and individuals give up, and lose touch with their social obligations, seeing that their taxes which provide for such assistance are repugnant and something to be avoided. So, the federal intention becomes something that most people (contributers and receivers) resent.


Well, Justice Story wrote only what he read in contemporaneous interpretations of the federal Constitution. Those interpretations were written immediately prior to, during and after the adoption of the Constitution and its welfare clauses. Yes, justices have presumed constitutional ideas wrongly, but, most of the time, if justices don’t get it correct, who among us would? This is an instance where appealing to authority makes sense simply because we invest our Court with that authority. So, if the welfare clauses exist both in the Constitution’s preamble as well as the taxation sections, would that suggest that the two are connected, especially with the capitation clause I cited earlier? Story knew this and simply articulated what the Founders and later framers intended. When we forget our constitutional foundations, we begin to see how easy it is to throw speech, privacy, association or religion under the bus. We shouldn’t be surprised when some do just that.

Having stated all that, I recognize that our current constitutional interpretations have changed. I disagree with the changes and believe that they are unconstitutional, but want them equally applied even if they exist mistakenly now.

Not at all.

"Promote the general welfare" means to do certain things that helps the country and the citizens as a whole. Such as building roads. Or improving public safety. It does not mean to hand out money to individuals.

It doesn't mean that at all. See my previous post.

I don't think criticizing people or things the way you want or using them or their beliefs and ideals as something you use to develop your sense of humor or any of your intentions without keeping in mind that others might dislike it or something because I can't imagine everyone to accept that and some people might act with anger which would lead to things the same as what happened in france, if you do something which involves others keep in mind that they would really get themselves involved with you. Do you know how many wars could have been prevented if people just kept their ideas to themselves? I think if something is getting very ugly then you can talk if you think your talk would help about it.

It could mean any of those things. It means anything to help the people of the country. The "general welfare" Is promoting the prosperity, ease and comfort of the inhabitants of a nation rather than doing them harm. Some people cannot deal with the entire meaning because they want the constitution to conform around what they personally believe when in reality, it was not penned to meet their specific needs but the needs of an entire nation.

The point is that free speech and the rights of individuals are more important than some hurt feelings. If that makes some radicals break the peace, too bad. I don't feel people need to give up their rights for peace.

Let's contrast it with England at the time...you had a King and monarchy not concerned with the citizens of a country, just themselves and their croonies. This is an example of what promote the general welfare was aimed at, that kind of callous disregard toward the people of a nation. Government cannot be an institution just for itself and its own interest, like King George seemed to be in favor of himself and the aristocracy over the peasant. That isn't what the ones who penned the constitution wanted for the US.

And clearly, protecting oneself was primarily on their minds. If one man has a pistol, another should just to keep the man with the pistol from drawing it on him. In England, one man, the aristocrat, could have the pistol and point it at the unarmed peasant while in America, the peasant could have the pistol and keep the aristocrat from abusing his privilege. That's the idea behind the second amendment. What the second amendment doesn't do is address other issues.

So what we have in the Preamble and first couple of amendments are people voicing their opinions on how unfair the system was in England so in this country, we will speak and write what we please without the king telling us we can or can't, we can have weapons so if a nobleman with a gun draws it, we can produce our pistol in return. That was the reality back then but nowadays it's not so much like that. The king (which is like, really the government these days since we have no US king) doesn't decide so much over every little thing but can stick its nose in concerning yelling fire in a theater type situations and that would pertain to matters of national security since yelling fire is pretty much a catch all for any kind of speech or press involved security risk. That's why they classify so many documents even though, technically, the constitution tells them they aren't allowed.

And as far as freedom of religion - we have always had issues in this country. It's more like freedom to practice Christianity which might have actually been what they had in mind when they wrote the constitution. It does sound entirely plausible considering how non secular Europe was at the time, yet you had certain ones who wanted to tell others they couldn't practice Christianity their way so they colonized other parts of the world to get away from such rulers who had issues with their religion. So freedom of religion, yeah, it could only mean freedom to practice Christianity anywhere at any time...however...it doesn't say exactly that so who knows? When you deliberately write something as vaguely as you possibly can, you never have to take responsibility for any of the fall out, do you?

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 16 Jan 2015, 1:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You're the one that is trying to make the Constitution conform to your left-wing views.

Please keep in mind, Eric, there was no left/right wing back then so they weren't sitting there thinking, is this going to sound leftist or like communism? It was more like, we just left this monarchy that only cares about itself and wants to take everything we have for itself and give us nothing in return but a difficult time. THAT is the very thing they were fighting against. The rulers have the people to protect, to promote, and to answer to. THAT is the original spirit of the Unites States government. It has nothing to do with left or right thinking because it didn't exist back then.

Over the years since the Constitution was adopted, the question of interpretation has been frequently debated. Should the interpretation be based on current definitions, standards and expectations? If so, which ones?

So, the U.S. Supreme Court (the only group vested with our constitutional authority to determine such things) decided generally and often (but, not always, unfortunately) that original intent must be at least considered when answering constitutional questions. Apart from the idea that the Founders and framers who wrote the Constitution probably knew best what they intended, obliging original intent also gives us an immutable standard against which future questions may be considered without the influence of whim or changing interpretations; a kind of level playing field.

For those who still feel the need to change the original meaning of the Constitution, it offers its own rules for doing so. Yes, they are a high standard to meet, but the Founders understood that certain natural (or God-given) rights (the rights to own property, to speak freely, to worship if desired, to protect oneself and one's family and friends from violence, to privacy and to be left alone) existed through all recorded history with little change. It was those natural rights that they sought to protect against ordinary changes in opinion. While laws get adopted with a slim majority, natural rights which have existed unchanged throughout history should have a higher standard.

The current attempts by some anti-constitutionalists to call the Constitution a "living document" and treat it as ever-changing is a legal dead end simply because of the 1,000 years of legal precedents and the 226 years of constitutional precedents. While it is true that something as novel as same-sex marriage has been found to exist within a document more than two centuries old, it came about by applying original intent of the Founders who adopted the Fifth Amendment protection from a person being "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" and the later Fourteenth Amendment protection of denying "any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The original intent worked to apply to a new class of constitutional beneficiaries without resorting to changing a thing.

This is how I expect the Constitution to be interpreted because it works.

As for the General Welfare Clause, the Court agreed with Justice Story in 1936 (again, over a taxation question) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_W ... 36_Rulings that "the General Welfare Clause was not a general grant of legislative power[.]" As such, the idea of general welfare must be applied to how laws affect all citizens. I disagree, therefore, that it provides for government assistance, though I recognize that the Congress and others have succeeded in changing that limitation.

No one denies we need to be able to protect ourselves but we need to respect the entire idea behind the constitution and that idea is the government should NEVER become something that we would feel the need to draw our guns in which to protect ourselves in the first place because it has been created to "promote the general welfare," and if it does that, we won't need to draw our guns. So when we are drawing them to protect ourselves, suggests our government is not living up to the entire bargain.

And another thing that was never addressed in the bill of rights - sure we as citizens have firearms but the government keeps amassing bigger more powerful weapons and we are still in the stone age with our pistols and rifles.

So, what is implied, nukes should be on the open market to balance the power out?

I do get the feeling when I read the beginning of the constitution, many who wrote it lived in a world where they had guns drawn on them in the past, or some kind of weapon, and were living in that reality where it wasn't uncommon to be in that situation and might even happen every day. Crime might seem out of control nowadays but most of us do not live in that kind of reality in the US today, where we find ourselves in that kind of possible peril every time we go outside and maybe even inside, too. It was much wilder then.

When trying to understand a set of principles, I like to get inside the lives of whomever wrote them and what they were going through or dealing with to figure out the entire story instead of just how it pertains to my life.

The main reason I like the founders so much is they were so pure. They weren't sitting there thinking, oh I can't think this because I will sound like a communist or a socialist or a fascist.

It was all about their heart and how they responded to the forces around them, for better or worst.

It was strictly between them and the abusive powers-that-be.

Nowadays, most are not honest because they think it will make them look a certain way or affiliated with a particular political philosophy. A false dichotomy exists today and it creates ideological deceit.