No Risk, No Reward: The General Welfare Clause

The continuing saga of the terribly mis-named Progressives, be they Democrats or Republicans, involves a twisting of our Constitution's Article I, Section 8, or what is known as the general welfare clause. Now, let me explain how this general welfare clause gets so twisted up by those impatient for "progress".

Have you ever noticed today that everyone has "rights"? I mean, they have rights about everything. But even worse, when they say "rights", what they really mean is "entitlements". They are always entitled to...well, whatever it is they think they are "right" to be "entitled" to. For instance, one of the true favorites of the Leftists is the tired old saying, "I am entitled to my opinion", which is sometimes expressed as "I have a right to my opinion". But what does this phrase really mean? The person who says this really means: "I am allowed to think and believe whatever I want to without needing to resort to factual or rational support for it, but if you disagree with me you're an idiot; and if you can rationally show me why you disagree, you're not only an idiot but you're also not to be tolerated". You've always got to read between, and beneath and behind, the lines when it comes to anything Leftists say or write.

Then there is the fact that Liberal court judges confuse privileges with rights. I forget precisely which judge it was now, but several years ago one such Liberal or "Progressive" judge told an uppity citizen in his courtroom that if he didn't settle down he would "suspend your [the citizen's] freedom of speech privileges." Huh? Hey, your Dishonorable, freedom of speech in the United States is not a privilege. Having a driver's license or a fishing license is a privilege. Freedom of speech is a right. Privileges can be revoked or suspended; rights cannot.

But what are our "rights"? Aren't we all "created equal"? Aren't we "endowed with...inalienable rights"? If I want something, isn't it my right to have it? No, it isn't. You have the right to: life, liberty, and the pursuit of property (that's right, property...but that's another story). Then, the Bill of Rights set out the finer details of what enumerated rights those three enumerated equalities give you as a citizen of the United States (incidentally, we are NOT all created equal in any other way...for instance, Conservatives are significantly more intelligent than Liberals, which is precisely why they are Conservatives). If it's not in there, you don't have a right to it, although you do have the right to make the case that it's a good thing or something that you want--freedom of speech.

What has all of this got to do with the general welfare clause? It's that failure of the Progressives, once again, to comprehend the fact that there are 16 enumerated powers invested in Congress by Article I, Section 8 that spell out what the federal government is allowed to do to "provide for the general welfare" of the states (and notice that it's the states' general welfare, not the absolutely detailed welfare of the states, and not the welfare of any individual at all.) If it's not in there, the federal government has no business doing it. Or, as James Madison somewhat better said it: "With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."

To relate this back to the "rights" principle, consider this: since we all have a right to freedom of speech, why doesn't the government give us all our very own stereo systems, car radios, televisions, and so on? (Incidentally, one reason is because although we have a right to speak, we don't have the right force others to hear us or heed us.) Since we have the right to keep and bear arms, why doesn't the government force every adult person in the U.S. to own at least one gun, and provide all of our guns to us? You can see where this is going...

The government does NOT have the Constitutional power to do things like provide us with any health care whatsoever, much less force us to buy it! Just so, the government doesn't have the power to tell us how to live our lives, just as long as we don't directly interfere with the equal rights spelled out for every U.S. citizen. If we want to smoke or have other "unhealthy" lifestyle traits, we are at liberty to do that.

What "welfare" used to mean is no longer what it means. It went from being a relatively secure and happy state to being an entitlement thanks to the foolish Hoover and the fascist Roosevelt. And since entitlements have now become "rights", welfare is seen as a right. And if welfare is a right, food and housing and a basic income must be rights, too. And if those things are rights, well...why not medicine and medical care?

The government can take away anything that it has the power to give. But what it cannot give, it cannot take away. The Progressives would do well to realize that there were very sound, wise reasons, which everybody before the foolish Hoover and the fascist Roosevelt understood, why those 16 enumerated powers were written up so that the government does NOT have the power to make welfare an individual matter, let alone an individual's "right".

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