I’ve shared it with a few tens of thousands of people I know.

Thank you!

Drop me a note, sir. I’d like to get to know you better and see if there aren’t ways to work together to put this republic back on its proper course.

tomhoefling@gmail.com

That’s right. Private organizations can have power and exercise coercion in their own unique ways, independent of government. However, that wasn’t the fear I was addressing. The fear was that businesses will use the legislative forces of government to increase their power. However, if the federal government were limited solely to its Constitutional jurisdiction, then businesses would be on their own, and if they do exercise coercion it will be without the government’s help.

I don’t think that’s the point – private organizations may not have their own armies, but they can coerce people in just as real ways. Any unproportional power, private or public, strikes at the roots of populism.

Also, you have no sources to back up the claim that “general welfare” applies only to the government. That was your own conclusion. The quotes are all about enumeration of powers.

As the blog points out, those powers, ceded to the government are enumerated. They are specific, easy to understand, written in English.

If it is NOT listed there in plain English, Congress my not assume that it is there and take the liberty that seems to run through parts [ you know who you are] of this thread.

Those enumerated powers tell Congress ONLY what they can do. They do not tell Congress what they can’t do, leaving open to interpretation something else they might dream up.

Were confusion seems to exist, take it back to the founders.

“On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” — Thomas Jefferson

And Jefferson again…When asked to read between the lines [of the Constitution] to find implied powers , he remarked he had and that he “only found blank spaces.”

The Tenth Amendment added by some concerned ratifiers, states in part if it isn’t there in the enumerated powers, it can’t be assumed.

Rights are retained by the people who created the States and the Federal Government.

“You can see the possibility of government taking over businesses, but you can’t see the reverse danger of business taking over and essentially becoming the government.”

You lack the sight to see that government is still the problem. If the government had limited powers, like the constitution intended, it wouldn’t matter much now would it?

The problem is, you got only half of socialism that way — the worse half of two bad halves. Profits remained privatized, losses were socialized, meaning if a company was doing well it got to keep its money, if it was doing badly it made sure it got subsidies and bailouts.

Is this something you should fight? Of course it is. The problem is, you’re fighting it at the wrong end because you have a blind spot in the private business direction. You can see the possibility of government taking over businesses, but you can’t see the reverse danger of business taking over and essentially becoming the government.

Of course ideally business wants cheap labor in the form of indentured servants, which are harder to get if people have a social safety net to fall back on, and so therefore they have the perfect unwitting allies in you guys, who try to keep contributions to the general welfare by the government from happening, meaning many people have to take corporate jobs just to get health insurance or go deeply into debt in order to get a decent college education.

In the short run this is very profitable for some people, in the long run it’s going to ruin your country, no matter how you define “general welfare.”

If a social market economy didn’t work Germany would have gone broke a long time ago with its generous welfare policies and weeks of mandated paid vacation. Instead we are the economic powerhouse of Europe with a huge trade surplus. If that ever changes I might listen to your philosophies of how to best define “general welfare” to not have anything to do with actual people’s welfare. But until then I look at your attempts to dismantle the New Deal with great bemusement.

If the federal government continues to grow more powerful I would not be surprised if a few states considered seceding from the union. After all their promises stated in the constitution have not been upheld.

Government works best on the local level, which is what the founders envisioned. The founders also envisioned that the government over time would morph into something unrecognizable. They realized it was the nature of government to get big and powerful looking into every nook and cranny of an individuals life. They did their best to try to slow this process so freedom would ring as long as possible. Sadly the tides have grown too strong and it gets to a point where the federal government needs to be told where to shove it.

AS I said earlier this book alone has changed my entire outlook on politics and if you have not read it in entirety I highly recommend reading it here. http://mises.org/books/freedomsiege.pdf