Quote:
danielpalos
He was also a republican at the time and could not support and defend the republican doctrine in practice, any better than modern republicans can defend their doctrine in practice. The federalist doctrine is a more consistent interpretation of our Constitution.
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No, in this context he was a Federalist. The fact that it was the opponents putting forward your interpretation and it was the proponents of the Constitution putting forward the clear notion that there was no general spending power conferred in the general welfare clause demonstrates that the general populous was disinclined to favor a Constitution that granted a general and unlimited power to spend for the "general welfare"; and since they did in fact ratify it that their understanding was that it was not a general grant of power, but rather as Madison put it a qualification on that preceeding it, itself qualified and restricted by the particular enumerations which followed.
Quote:
danielpalos
Our artificial Wars on abstractions are more disingenuous in that they are not specifically enumerated and must resort to forms of fallacy to be perpetuated, even with a McCarthy era phrase in our social contract and pledge.
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And that's what makes your wording so damn silly. You are treating a mere rhetorical device as though it has any significance on the underlying constitutionality. What would you be saying if our policies were exactly the same, but that nobody had ever referred to it rhetorically as the "war on drugs"? What if instead it had been called the American Mind-Altering Substances General Welfare Restrictions and Policing Effort. No change in policy, just change in terminology? would your "general warfare" term make any sense in that case?
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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"
----Denny Crane
