Original Intent – Instructive Then and Now

Its extremely important, especially at this juncture in our history, to fully understand what our Founding Fathers correctly meant when using the word welfare.

Let’s start off with the usage of welfare in the Constitution by looking at Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Now the definitions of ‘general’ & ‘welfare’:

general: of or pertaining to all persons or things belonging to a group or category. origin: 1250–1300; Middle English

welfare: the good fortune, health, happiness, prosperity, etc., of a person, group, or organization; origin: 1275–1325; Middle English

So, as we can see the Founding Father’s enumerated to Congress that they have the power to provide for the good fortune, health, happiness, & prosperity for the United States as a whole. They did not enumerate to Congress that they have the power to provide for specific individuals at the expense or labor of other specific individuals.  If they had intended to do so then our Founding Fathers would be setting up an oligarchy.

Let’s examine just exactly what the Founding Fathers did mean by “provide for the … general welfare of the United States”. First, Thomas Jefferson explains that it is not the job of government to take care of specific people. Jefferson correctly understands that individuals are wholly capable of pursuing their own happiness.

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy. (Berg, Writings of Thomas Jefferson)

Next, we find Samuel Adams categorically state that the notion of providing welfare to specific individuals, is not only wrong but that communism and socialism are also unconstitutional.

The Utopian schemes of leveling [redistribution of the wealth] and a community of goods [central ownership of the means of production and distribution] are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional. (Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams.)

Additionally, until the Progressives distorted the meaning of general welfare in the Butler case in 1936, the Supreme Court correctly stated that redistribution of wealth was unconstitutional:

No man would become a member of a community in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and industry.  The preservation of property, then, is a primary object of the social compact.. The legislature, therefore, had no authority to make an act divesting one citizen of his freehold, and vesting it in another, without a just compensation.  It is inconsistent with the principles of reason, justice, and moral rectitude; it is incompatible with the comfort, peace, and happiness of mankind; it is contrary to the principles of social alliance in every free government; and lastly, it is contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution. (2 Dall 304, 310 [PA 1795])

This inconsistency with the principles of reason, justice, and moral rectitude can be traced back to Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia which I shall leave up to you to discover in the link I provided.

So perhaps you can begin to see why I emphatically maintain that what America needs is not a ‘fundamental transformation’ but a fundamental restoration of the original intent of the Constitution.

Only then can we insure that the greatest nation ever on this planet can remain so.