(Tea Party) Constitutional fundamentalists are wackos

Dude, you lost. Get over it. Move on.

Spend your time trying to achieve financial success instead of blaming your financial failure on Congressional power to provide for the general welfare.

 

Would not the 10th Amendment as an amendment to the constitution overrule your broad reading of art. 1 section 8? The two are not of equal standing. As an amendement the 10th amendemnt has more weight than the origional section.

 

Um....wat? Show you that the Founders meant what the Founders meant? Since the Founders are the ones who made the Constitution...

So...you don't believe in quotes (the entirety of the Constitution is a quote, btw), but you'll use a quote here?

Ah. You like Patrick Henry? Since you're willing to accept Patrick Henry as an authority on this topic, let's do that:

*note that Henry held anti-Federalist positions, but the French Revolution led to him changing his mind: he was later elected to the Virginia House of Delegates as a Federalist.

It is important to understand Henry's objections to the Constitution as written. He wanted to ensure that the Federal Government was not given anything but specifically enumerated powers - a position which opposes the POV of Fred.

We all know what Madison has said on this topic; it has already been posted in this thread:

 

Many like Patrick Henry were concerned that the clause would eventually transform the government into one of unlimited powers. Good call Mr. Henry.

In other words, that is not what he wanted. He was reassured by the other Founders that that is not what was intended, as explained in the above link.

You've lost this debate, Fred from Texas. One thing was clear from the quotes of our Founding Fathers: they did not want the Federal Government to unlawfully claim for itself all of the powers that you now laud.

 

It's not actually my reading. However, it is a reasonable construction and it is the prevailing interpretation.

 

How would it overrule a grant of broad Congressional power to provide for the general welfare?

 

I take that to mean that you have no evidence that the men who made the Constitution believed it should be interpreted according to what notions the founders supposedly condemned.

 

The Patrick Henry quote shows that a broad reading of Congressional power to provide for the general welfare is a reasonable one. Unless of course you contend that Mr. Henry wasn't a reasonable man.

The Henry quote should not be used to construe the words in the Constitution, unless allowed by the rules of construction.

 

Dude, there is no evidence that the lawmakers wanted us to interpret the Constitution according to Patrick Henry's interpretation or that of any other delegate to one of the State Ratification Conventions.

 

Can I get a link for the above quotation so that it can be examined in context, and to ascertain what words were replaced with the ellipses?

A web search for that exact phrase as quoted only returns a link to this thread.

Thanks.

 

Henry objected to the Constitution because, as a lawyer, he knew it could be reasonably interpreted by reasonable men to grant Congress broad power to provide for the general welfare.

 

You have no evidence that The Framers intended the Government to grow into all things for all people, and your only defense of your position is that "this is what we have".

That is a weak defense, in light of these observations:

1) What we have isn't working, and requires punitive levels of taxation; levels that the Founders would have expected the Citizenry to revolt over by now;

2) We have reams of quotations and other documents showing that - one side - many of the Founders were extremely worried that the Government would take for itself powers that weren't explicitly enumerated, and - on the other side - the responding Founders didn't take the tack that it would expand in the manner worried about by Henry, but (instead), explained:

Why would the framers take the time to specifically enumerate the specific powers if the general welfare clause were to supersede them?

It is common to mention a general phrase and follow it with specifics and particulars.

Also by misinterpretation of the General Welfare clause tramples all over the 10th Amendment, which says:

“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 isn't difficult to discern in the slightest. Simply pointing out that there was dissention over the wording in the Constitution doesn't mean that you can simply take leave of it entirely. It is very apparent that the Founding Fathers did not intend for the Constitution to be taken in the direction you support, Fred.

Your social experiment - undertaken only through a tortured abuse of the intent of the Founders - has failed. It is time for you to cede to those who know better.

 

Not quite: the rebuttal of the other Founders was that it was unreasonable to interpret it in that way, hence the quote from James Madison in my prior post.

 

A very good article on the US Constititution that explores the ascension of the "legal realism" philosophy of Constitutional interpretation that began with the "progressive" movement in the 19th Century and peaked between 1920-1940 but which still has allies today.

This is contrary to how the Constitution was written and interpreted for over 100 years.

http://news.yahoo.com/american-judges-must-bench-rule-law-sapping-empathy-200000623.html

Ultimately the choice is between having a Constitutional government where what is actually written down in the Constitution take precedence or whether the subjective determinations made by judges that can literally contradict what the Constitution states thereby creating a Judicial government instead of a Constitutional government.

 

There is evidence that the lawmakers wanted Congress to have power to provide for the general welfare.

It's working for me, dude. I have accumulated great wealth.

My taxes aren't punitive.

Now, all you need to do is provide us with some evidence that the lawmakers wanted us to interpret the Constitution according to quotations and other documents.

Why would they say Congress had a general power if they were going to be specific?

If you say so.

The Tenth Amendment could be reasonably interpreted to deny the "powers not delegated" to the people of the individual states.

 

The clause is ambiguous and both interpretations are reasonable. One prevailed and one didn't. There's no right or wrong.

 

How did I know that my request for a link would be completely ignored...

 

I did it from memory, dude. Henry said it during the Virginia Convention. I'm too lazy to go find it right now.

 

Well when you get a spurt of energy let me know as I am genuinely interested in the context of what I assume is a paraphrasing of Henry's words.

 

Certainly it's true that an amendment supercedes anything in the Constitution as previously amended with which it may be in conflict, but there is no conflict between 10A and A1S8, since it should be clear that the latter places limits on Congress even under the Hamiltonian interpretation.

 

what ?

No more tea party/ Alex Jones bashing ???


We are gonna bash the tea party in Washington, Alabma, Rhode Island, and Michigan ....

And all the way to the White House!

YYYYEEEEEEEEAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Here is James Madison, in 1830, admitting that if words are taken literally, the terms "common defence and general welfare," convey comprehensive power.

If it be asked why the terms "common defence and general welfare," if not meant to convey the comprehensive power which, taken literally, they express, were not qualified and explained by some reference to the particular power subjoined, the answer is at hand--that, although it might easily have been done, and experience shows it might he well if it had beau done, yet the omission is accounted for by an inattention to the phraseology, occasioned, doubtless, by the identity with the harmless character attached to it in the instrument from which it was borrowed. ​

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(ed004116)): ​

I don't believe the Constitution should be construed according to statements made after it was adopted. I offer the quote only as evidence that the clause is ambiguous.

 

Argument ad populum is a fallacy.

But it is one good reason to consider the Constitution to be a fine document but an anachronism with no authority. When the government usurped the power to decide for itself what was allowable under its own charter, the thing was already useless.

 

Absolutely correct! The FACT that the militia is not "well regulated" is a fault of Congress, and has nothing to do with the "...right of the people to keep and bear arms..."

 

Ahh, yes, good ol' Madison.

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions. It is to be remarked that the phrase out of which this doctrine is elaborated, is copied from the old articles of Confederation, where it was always understood as nothing more than a general caption to the specified powers, and it is a fact that it was preferred in the new instrument for that very reason as less liable than any other to misconstruction." --James Madison

"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." --James Madison