Originally Posted by Marcus1124

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.

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?