General Welfare For Dummies
Created by ThisIsMyPost on 11/3/05 at 2:48 PM General Welfare For DummiesReposted from this site.You know sometimes I get so used to what I consider painfully obvious truths that I forget that not everyone finds the truths that I find to be painfully obvious to be obvious. One of those obvious truths that I casually take for granted is that the General Welfare clause in the Constitution does not provide allowance for our current Welfare State, nor for the mentality that allows the Federal government to pursue rapacious and confiscatory taxation in the name of 'compassion,' on some snail darter or lesbian heroin addict. The Constitution says, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Now there are those that want to suggest that the preamble's call to 'promote the general Welfare' was the legitimate Constitutional basis upon which Roosevelt's Socialistic New Deal could stand. Now perhaps someone's History teacher could at least ask himself why very few read the general Welfare clause of the Constitution in this fashion before the destructive politics of the New Deal? Perhaps some History teacher could consult some history to determine how James Madison (he's the guy History refers to as the Father of the Constitution) understood the 'general Welfare' clause as he debated against those who were concerned that geniuses would make that clause so elastic as to countenance all manner of economic perfidy. "Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power ``to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,'' amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare." The Anti-consolidationists were anxious that the general Welfare clause would be a means by which the Federal Government could steal from the citizenry in order to pursue some Mercantilist ambitions. Madison countered this concern by pleading with the Anti-consolidationists to realize that the language of the whole Constitution could never allow for such a fanciful interpretation. "Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases." Now we admire Madison's reasoning even if we must call into question his ability to assess the future ignorance of those who would come behind him who would indeed find a 'reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases.' Madison lamented that his opponents were 'stooping to such a misconstruction,' in objecting to the Constitution on grounds of the general Welfare clause. Madison underestimated the ability of men to misconstrue and in hindsight the Anti-consolidationists weren't stooping at all. Now Madison goes on in Federalist paper #41 to give reasons why the Constitution does not allow anyone to appeal to the general Welfare clause in order to justify the wickedness of the New Deal. "But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter." Madison is basically saying to his Anti-consolidationists opponents in their objection that the general Welfare clause will allow for all kinds of fiscal irresponsibility ... "Don't be idiots mouthing absurdities. It is obvious that this general statement is qualified and limited by the Constitution itself in what follows. No right reasoning person would ever conclude that that the enumeration of the particulars wouldn't set definitive parameters on the meaning of 'general Welfare,' nor would reasonably intelligent people ever conclude that the specifying of the particulars was only intended to confuse and mislead as to what is meant by the 'general Welfare' phrase." It seems Madison had the same problem I do in forgetting that truths that are so painfully obvious to one person aren't necessarily obvious to another person. I conclude this because a generation of idiots did rise up mouthing absurdities and justifying it all in the name of the 'general Welfare' clause. Finally, Madison himself gives a historical lesson as to where the phrase 'general Welfare' came from. "The objection here is the more extraordinary, as it appears that the language used by the convention is a copy from the articles of Confederation. The objects of the Union among the States, as described in article third, are ``their common defense, security of their liberties, and mutual and general welfare. '' The terms of article eighth are still more identical: ``All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury,'' etc. A similar language again occurs in article ninth. Construe either of these articles by the rules, which would justify the construction put on the new Constitution, and they vest in the existing Congress a power to legislate in all cases whatsoever. But what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions, and disregarding the specifications, which ascertain and limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the common defense and general welfare? I appeal to the objectors themselves, whether they would in that case have employed the same reasoning in justification of Congress as they now make use of against the convention. How difficult it is for error to escape its own condemnation!" Madison's point here is that this language was used before and nobody concluded what the Anti-consolidationists were concluding, to wit, that the Federal Government had the right to do anything it desired in the name of the 'general Welfare,' clause. In the end all the general Welfare clause allowed was for the Federal Government to promote (which, by the way, is a different word than legislate) the good of the whole people and not any particular special interest group. The ABC legislation of Roosevelt's New Deal was not for the good of the whole people but rather was political payoff to Roosevelt's political cronies done in order to help Roosevelt solidify an unbeatable Democratic Electoral college. So, the 'general Welfare' clause cannot be appealed to in order to justify the ABC legislation of the New Deal. The 'general Welfare' clause cannot be appealed to in order to justify taking money from the taxpayers in order to give money to corporate giants like Archer Daniel Midlands or Boeing. The 'general Welfare' clause does not justify taking money from the taxpayers in order to give Foreign Aid to Saudi Arabia so it can free up their money to build and support Islamic Mosques in America. And finally, the 'general Welfare' clause certainly cannot be appealed to in order to take wages from the taxpayer in order to pay the wages of College teachers who don't know what history says about the 'general Welfare' clause and who are instrumental in shaping a generation of idiots who mouth absurdities.  I recognize this thread as being addressed to me, and will simply say that I heartily disagree with you on this subject. The federal government has a very clear responsbility to "promote the general welfare of society," and that involves seeing to it that the lowliest amongst us do not starve and die in our streets of neglect. I am quite confident that the majority of Americans are wise and benevolent enough to recognize that the federal government has a very important role in seeing to it that we don't have to trip over dead bodies in the streets. Btw, Madison is NOT the source to seek if you wish to find support for benevolence. He was an elitist and a pure aristocrat, who wished for the United States to become a form of monarchy, where only the elite could serve in government, and wealth would be continuously concentrated to the aristocrats of society, rather than used for the betterment of general society. Thankfully, his vision wasn't held by the majority. Sadly, his vision has been resurrected by today's neocons. I also heartily disagree with your assessment of FDR's New Deal. It undoubtedly solidified a very strong base for democratic power for decades to come, but it also provided massive wealth and growth to the whole of society. Where would this nation have been without the programs and great projects that were a part of this massive plan? How many trillions of dollars of wealth have been generated as a direct result of the development of communication lines, electrical grids, irrigation and power from dams, solid employment for millions of unemployed persons, etc., etc., etc.? See, this is where Madison and those who worship at his alter fail in their thinking. They have a very myopic vision, because they scrutinize the bare essence of minutia, rather than consider the vast explosion of limitless opportunity that can lie BEYOND that minutia. While Madison was busy micro-managing a simple phrase of the constitution, those with far larger vision were busy building a great society from the ground up. Thank God the Madisonites weren't allowed to hold America back the way that they desired. 
By
antismirk
on 11/3/05 at 5:26 PM
One thing's for sure: the general welfare cause cannot be used to justify corporate welfare as the Reaganites believe.
By
luckky
on 11/3/05 at 10:47 PM
Kiss Your Money Good Bye
By
luckky
on 11/3/05 at 10:49 PM
//The federal government has a very clear responsibility to "promote the general welfare of society,"//
Yes, it does and that does NOT cover Specific welfare .. not to corporations, not to nations and not to people. //Madison is NOT the source to seek if you wish to find support for benevolence// I do not seek support for benevolence .. I seek only the truth of the constitution's reasons for that clause from the very PENS of the people who WROTE it. By citing the circumstances of Madison's life you are only invoking a logically corrupt argument. It makes no matter if he was a Monarchist or a circus clown, he explains adequately WHY the clause was in there. Mind you, he was also defending clearly in the letters as a reply to "the people" who were AFRAID that the clause would promote the very America you are trying to convince people we've had all along. -- we haven't and those people didn't want it .. and Madison was trying to put their fears to rest as the constitution DOES NOT give government power to take money from The People and prop up whatever specific system they want .. be it failing businesses, failing countries or failing people. //It undoubtedly solidified a very strong base for democratic power for decades to come// Democratic (capitol D), yes. aka socialistic. FDR went to England to study how the English aristocracy promoted socialism. //While Madison was busy micro-managing a simple phrase of the constitution// Madison was responding to specific letters written to him by the very people that would have to support the constitution ... the farmers and teachers and land owners and normal people who saw that clause in the constitution and wrote directly to him criticizing that clause as it might promote the federal government to assume power over things that no one thought it SHOULD have power over. His replies were not micro-managing the language, they were justifying WHY it was in the constitution and that it has .. in his own words .. NOTHING to do with handing out food stamps or propping up airlines. This is clear. From the horse's mouth. It's not even debatable. You can say that even though you THINK that there should be SPECIFIC welfare that does not change the FACT that the clause GENERAL welfare was addressed several times in the days the constitution was written by the very people who WROTE the constitution. Any argument that that clause supports Stealing money from hard working Americans to spread a socialist concept of "fair share" is corrupt, sophomoric, and just plain wrong. I respect your WANT to spread socialism around the nation but please stop lying to the good forum users, misleading them into thinking that's how the constitution was written. You're just simply wrong and the propaganda you're spreading is inaccurate.
By
ThisIsMyPost
on 11/4/05 at 12:55 AM
"Don't be idiots mouthing absurdities. It is obvious that this general
statement is qualified and limited by the Constitution itself in what
follows. No right reasoning person would ever conclude that that the
enumeration of the particulars wouldn't set definitive parameters on
the meaning of 'general Welfare,' nor would reasonably intelligent
people ever conclude that the specifying of the particulars was only
intended to confuse and mislead as to what is meant by the 'general
Welfare' phrase."
That's pretty damn clear .. arguing that the constitution gives the government powers to take money from those that have and give it away AKA Robin Hood style as ... in his words ... "idiots mouthing absurdities" He also questions anyone sanity when people question if the constitution which HE HELPED WRITE supports a government controlled specific welfare .. in his words "No right reasoning person would ever conclude that that the enumeration of the particulars wouldn't set definitive parameters on the meaning of 'general Welfare'". From the mouths of the author. This is why interpreting the constitution is NOT like interpreting the bible. We have clear and direct writings documenting the debates and reasons for basicialy every clause in the constitution published and printed by the very people who WROTE it.
By
ThisIsMyPost
on 11/4/05 at 1:12 AM
//benevolent enough to recognize that the federal government has a very
important role in seeing to it that we don't have to trip over dead
bodies in the streets// What logical process do you use to arrive at the original intent of the constitution would have the streets piled in bodies? Was that the case up until FDR's New Deal? No. Straw man argument and misdirection. Where in the constitution does it say what you are trying to assert? We've already clearly shown that it's not the 2 words "general welfare" in the preamble.
By
ThisIsMyPost
on 11/4/05 at 1:19 AM
In reply to your New Deal myth:
Henry Hazlitt and John T. Flynn (among others) knew in the 1930s: FDR's New Deal made the Great Depression longer and deeper. It is a myth that Franklin D. Roosevelt "got us out of the Depression" and "saved capitalism from itself," as generations of Americans have been taught by the state's educational establishment. This realization on the part of macroeconomists comes in the form of an article in the August 2004 Journal of Political Economy entitled "New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis," by UCLA economists Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian. This is a big deal, since the JPE is arguably the top academic economics journal in the world. "Real gross domestic product per adult, which was 39 percent below trend at the trough of the Depression in 1933, remained 27 percent below trend in 1939," the authors write. And "Similarly, private hours worked were 27 percent below trend in 1933 and remained 21 percent below trend in 1939." This should be no surprise to anyone who has studied the reality of the Great Depression, for U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that the official unemployment rate was still 17.2 percent in 1939 despite seven years of "economic salvation" at the hands of the Roosevelt administration (the normal, pre-Depression unemployment rate was about 3 percent). Per capita GDP was lower in 1939 than in 1929 ($847 vs. $857), as were personal consumption expenditures ($67.6 billion vs. $78.9 billion), according to Census Bureau data. Net private investment was minus $3.1 billion from 1930–40. Cole and Ohanian write as though they were surprised—even shocked—to discover these facts, not so much because they were bamboozled by The Myth of the New Deal, but because of their devotion to "neoclassical model building" as opposed to the study of economic reality. They label as "striking" the fact that the recovery from the Great Depression was "very weak" (a dramatic understatement). And why is it so striking? Because "[t]hese data contrast sharply with neoclassical theory . . ." The neoclassical theory of depressions might well be thought of as a Frankenstein Monster theory. As explained by Cole and Ohanian, "The weak recovery is puzzling because the large negative shocks that some economists believe caused the 1929–33 downturn—including monetary shocks, productivity shocks, and banking shocks—become positive after 1933." Thus, according to neoclassical theory, the economy during a depression is somewhat like a prostrate Frankenstein monster, with economists playing the role of mad scientists who "shock" the beast into becoming a living being once again. They do this with various "injections" of government spending or easy credit that will supposedly cause a "roaring" recovery (just as the rejuvenated beast roared as he left the laboratory to terrorize the townsfolk in the movie, "Young Frankenstein"). "The monetary base increases more than 100 percent between 1933 and 1939," the authors write, making the case that such a "monetary shock" should have returned the economy to normalcy. They invoke the authority of well-known macroeconomists Robert Lucas and Leonard Rapping, who once proclaimed that "positive monetary shocks should have produced a strong recovery, with employment returning to its normal levels by 1936." But as Murray Rothbard showed in America's Great Depression, it was the easy money policies of the early and mid 1920s that created all the malinvestment that was the trigger for the Great Depression. The only wise thing to have done was to allow the liquidation of hundreds of overcapitalized businesses to occur. Instead, the Fed increased the monetary base by 100 percent in five years, causing more of the same overcapitalization problems that were the source of the problem in the first place. On top of that, virtually every single one of FDR's "New Deal" policies made things even worse and prolonged the Depression. Cole and Ohanian apparently emerged from the rarified world of macroeconomic model building for a long enough period of time to discover that the so-called First New Deal (1933–34) was one giant cartel scheme, whereby the government attempted to enforce cartel pricing and output reductions in hundreds of industries and in agriculture. This of course was well documented in John T. Flynn's book, The Roosevelt Myth, first published in 1948. Henry Hazlitt had also written about it some fifteen years earlier. "New Deal cartelization policies are a key factor behind the weak recovery, accounting for about 60 percent of the difference between actual output and trend output," the authors write. The fact that it has taken "mainstream" neoclassical economists so long to recognize this fact is truly astounding. For generations their own neoclassical textbooks have taught that cartels "restrict output" to raise prices. It has also been no secret that the heart and soul of the First New Deal was to use the coercive powers of government to prop up wages and prices by cartelizing the entire economy. FDR and his advisors mistakenly believed that the Depression was caused by low prices, therefore, high prices—enforced by threats of violence, coercion and intimidation by the state—would be the "solution." Moreover, it is hardly a secret that if less production takes place, fewer workers will be needed by employers and unemployment will subsequently be higher. Thus, the First New Deal could not possibly have been anything but a gigantic unemployment-producing scheme according to standard neoclassical economic theory. FDR's tripling of taxes, his regulation of business, and his relentless anti-business propaganda also contributed to a worsening of the Great Depression, but his labor policies were probably the most harmful to the employment prospects of American workers. In this regard the most disappointing thing about the Cole-Ohanian article is that they do not even cite the pioneering work of Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway—Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth Century America—first published in 1993.
By
ThisIsMyPost
on 11/4/05 at 1:24 AM
QED : Quod Erat Demonstrandum (that which was to be demonstrated)
The propoganda that you spread has been debunked for over 70 years. Please stop propogating one of the most pervasive urban legends of our time.
By
ThisIsMyPost
on 11/4/05 at 1:30 AM
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