I spoke with Utah's new U.S. Senator Mike Lee yesterday and asked him what federal spending is beyond the proper scope of federal involvement. His answer is worth hearing.
Friday, April 8, 2011
A government of enumerated, and therefore limited, powers
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Obviously Sen. Lee is not familiar with the Constitution. Article I, Section 8 Clause 8 that gives Congress the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts.
That is not a limited government concept. The word progress refutes that.
Then too, as Alexander Hamilton elaborated on the general welfare clause in his 1791 report to Congress on manufactures, the founders did not intend for government to be limited in what it can do. Hamilton wrote:
The terms “general welfare” were doubtless intended to signify more than was expressed or imported in those that preceded otherwise, numerous exigencies incident to the affairs of a nation would have been left without a provision. The phrase is as comprehensive as any that could have been used; because it was not fit that the constitutional authority of the Union to appropriate its revenues should have been restricted within narrower limits than the “general welfare;” [Art. 1, §8, Clause 1] and because this necessarily embraces a vast variety of particulars, which are susceptible neither of specification nor of definition.
Hamilton wasn't a feudalist. Hence, feudalists preach their feudalistic doctrine of limited government misrepresenting it as reflecting the views of our founders. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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