Does Not the Fact That the Constitution Has the Phrase “General Welfare” in It Mean That the Government Can Do?
Question by Thelastninja: Does not the fact that the constitution has the phrase “general welfare” in it mean that the government can do?
anything they want whenever they want without changing the constitution? I mean why even have amendments? I’m glad the officials figured this out. Remember when they made alcohol illegal, they changed the whole constitution, but when they made all the other drugs illegal they realized that it was in the general welfare of the public to do so, so they were able to do so without an amendment. This is a great thing! Why would we not want our government to be as powerful as they can be? Think about it, if they tried to make an amendment, I bet all the druggies would lobby congress and block the amendment. Imagine that, people still might be doing drugs today if we needed an amendment. Thankfully congress acted in our general welfare and now no one is able to get drugs.
Best answer:
Answer by Chucky T
I have a great book you should read it is called the Five Thousand Year Leap by Author Cleon Skousen you should read it it’s great.
Answer by Freedom4
The liberals try to warp the meaning of the “general welfare” while ignoring the interpretation of that phrase as clearly explained by James Madison (the father of the constitution)
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:
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. If the words obtained so readily a place in the “Articles of Confederation,” and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”
–Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817
I guess your liberal constitution teacher conveniently forgot to mention that just as you I am sure do not mention that to your students.
If you pay attention to the words of ALL of the founding fathers, it was their intentions to allow us to own and have guns, and the main reason they cited was to keep politicians scared of revolt. Not just to hunt or anything like that.
The Constitution is not a obsticle to our freedoms, it is a guarantee, and we have the right to Private property, which you are trying to steal, and there is not right to health care, which you are trying to distort.
“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
–James Madison
“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
— Benjamin Franklin
That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers:
That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.
— Thomas Jefferson, 1799
I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, February 15, 1791
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