E.J. Dionne Jr.: The Founders’ true spirit - The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-jr-the-founders-true-spirit/2012/07/04/gJQAiQq7NW_story.html)

It’s entirely appropriate that the week of our July Fourth celebrations should coincide with a moment when the Supreme Court’s health-care decision has prompted intense debate over the purpose of our government and what the Constitution allows it to do.

We are a more philosophical people than we give ourselves credit for. Constitutional questions enter the political conversation in the United States more than in most countries because our diverse nation is bound by our founding principles, not by blood, race or ethnicity.

So far, so good.

But then...

The Founders would no doubt be gratified that we still care so passionately about their work. But they might be quite surprised to learn how much of our health-care debate focused on a careful parsing of what the Constitution’s clauses on regulating commerce and levying taxes allowed us to do to solve a problem that would have been unknown to them. We would be truer to the Founders’ intentions and spirit if we followed Madison in having more confidence in our own good sense and our knowledge of our own situation.

Our problem with health care would be unknown to them because they would never have considered medicine even remotely the business of the federal government in terms of paying for it. Regulate? Sure. Pay for it? Hardly. It took them 30 years to pay the troops after we beat the Brits the first time.

The commerce clause is simply in keeping with the intent for the government to promote the general welfare.


Not provide it. THAT is what they would not get about us.

But then, this would strike them as odd as well, EJ's closing blurb;

The genius of the Founders is that they created a government designed to act, and so I’d propose a new patriotic ritual involving an annual reading of the preamble to our Constitution:

No they did NOT. They designed a federal government specifically to be LIMITED and NOT act other than in specifically designated areas and making you buy a house or cloths or food or medicine were NOT part of the idea.

:buddies:

"The genius of the Founders is that they created a government designed to act, and so I’d propose a new patriotic ritual involving an annual reading of the preamble to our Constitution:"


The Preamble serves solely as an introduction, and does not assign powers to the federal government,[1] nor does it provide specific limitations on government action. Due to the Preamble's limited nature, no court has ever used it as a decisive factor in case adjudication,[2] except as regards frivolous litigation.[3

The liberalist abstract interpretation and wholesale "make it say what I want it to" attitude of the left has so obliterated the forefathers intent that people believe what they are told about the document (A lie told enough times becomes believed to be true, even by the original liar). I am so wishing for the invention of a time machine so we could just go back to Philly and ask them everytime somebody says "That's not what the meant, I know what they meant and it fits my agenda". Now if I could just find my flux capacitor and dilythium crystals..............