A Libertarian Ignorance Of General Welfare Challenges Jared Polis
It doesn’t take a genius to identify the political ideology of Stephen Bailey, a Republican who is challenging progressive Democrat Jared Polis for Congress in 2010. Bailey fits within the trend within the Republican Party of emphasizing libertarian ideas.
Bailey’s frequent references to Ayn Rand are the first big clue. Bailey’s suggestions that practically any action by the federal government is unconstitutional is a confirmation. Bailey explains, “I hold to a strict construction of the U.S. Constitution. Congress’s powers are limited to those enumerated in Article I, Section 8.”
Actually, there are other parts of the Constitution besides that particular section that provide powers to Congress. But, nitpicking aside, what kind of congressional power does Bailey think is unconstitutional, under Article 1, Section 8?
Helping people, actually. Stephen Bailey doesn’t think that the government should be in the business of helping its citizens. He refers to government assistance, paid for with money gathered by taxes, as “enforced charitable giving”:
“As Ayn Rand said: Morality ends where a gun begins. Unconstitutional powers currently exercised by Congress are driven from a mistaken desire to enforce morality on the citizenry through government enforced charitable giving.”
Stephen Bailey seems very certain that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution forbids the spending of tax money in order to help people, but if you actually read Article 1, Section 8 instead of just accepting Bailey’s word for it, you’ll see that he’s just plain wrong. Article 1, Section 8 begins: “The Congress shall have 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”.
The meaning of this clause is very clear: If a legislative action can be justified as providing for the general welfare of the United States, then Congress has the power to do it (other provisions providing some limitations, such as the guarantees of free speech and so on in the Bill of Rights). There’s no provision anywhere else in the Constitution that forbids Congress from engaging in secular charitable action.
Stephen Bailey’s opposition to health care reform, and other government programs to help Americans, is based upon a profound misunderstanding of the Constitution of the United States of America. It’s the responsibility of Congress to act as one of three coequal branches of the federal government in accordance with the rules established by the Constitution. Bailey’s campaign so far suggests that, in this regard, he is poorly suited to replace Jared Polis in the U.S. House of Representatives.
It also doesn’t take a genius to understand that the U. S. Constitution was written and adopted to LIMIT the powers of the government. The limits were imposed because people wanted the government to protect their rights, not to take away the money they earned in order to give it to those who hadn’t earned it. Section 8 gives powers to “provide for the … general welfare of the United States” Did you notice that it doesn’t say to provide for the welfare of individuals who are in need? This was argued over two hundred years ago in The Federalist #41. If “helping people” was a primary role of the government, then we would have immediately established some kind of collectivist, statist society instead of an individualist, Capitalist society that we had for so long. It took a long time for people to be corrupted to the point where they do not understand this. But thanks for publicizing Ayn Rand. May her books sell ever more in the future. We need her philosophy, her morality of rational self interest especially, to save us from committing national suicide.
Jack, the Constitution was written in order to provide a legal foundation for government powers, not to take powers away from a previously existing government. If you’ll review the history of the document, you’ll find that it was written to correct the problems that took place under the Articles of Confederation, which were much too weak.
You yourself argue that the general welfare clause would count if only we established a “collectivist” society, but that’s just what we did, to a reasonable extent, with the general welfare clause. The argument that the government can help the general welfare of the nation without helping the actual American people makes no sense, especially when you consider that the system of government established under the Constitution is supposed to be a government of the people.
I disagree. The constitution was written to establish a new government with more, but still limited powers than existed under the Articles of Confederation. They limited the government powers specifically because the government of England was trampling over their rights before the revolutionary war was won. To talk about a system that provides welfare for “the people” when you know full well that some people are sacrificed for the benefit of other people is disingenuous at best. To say that Bill Gates would be eligible for food stamps should he ever need them is not very persuasive.
Jack, for centuries now the Supreme Court has agreed with the Hamiltonian (as in Alexander Hamilton) understanding of the general welfare clause in the U.S. Constitution. I understand you disagree with the Supreme Court’s understanding of the Constitution, but that’s not really going to get you far in a practical sense.
The Supreme court also disagreed with the proposition that the draft was involuntary servitude. If you remember, a republican president was in office and got rid of the draft a few years ago, probably before you were born. For all I know neither the Supreme Court nor Charlie Rangel (who wanted to reinstitute the draft in this century) are against slavery.