Derideo_Te
Je Suis Charlie
- Mar 2, 2013
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Exactly. Even the most cursory examination of the Founding documents makes it clear that the Founders opposed the federal government providing ANY form of charity or benevolence to anybody. To a man, they knew how corrupting that would quickly become. The GENERAL welfare was that which benefitted all the states and all the people without regard to politics, religion, demographics, or socioeconomic status. Restoring allegiance to that single fundamental concept would do wonders to replace career politicans and bureaucrats with honest public servants again; it would do wonders to stabilize the economy and restore the American dream.
And that is why my choice of an event to change in American history is to negate the corruption of the Constitution done in the T Roosevelt administration. That simple change of history would almost certainly have avoided us at least most of the mess we are currently in.
With all due respect, Foxy, the world of the Founding Fathers predated the industrial revolution. The world was a very different place when TR took office. The FF's understood that the world would change and they did not create a rigid document with which to dictate how America must be run. Instead they were deliberate in choosing terms like the "general welfare" knowing full well that what was defined as "general welfare" in 1795 would be different to what it would be in 1895 and different yet again by 1995. Society evolves because we are transforming our world like no species since the Carboniferrous period. To ignore that change or to want to roll the clock 225 years is unrealistic in my opinion.
They knew the general welfare, as they defined it, would change over time yes. But the principle that the general welfare referred to all of society, without regard to politics or demographics or socioeconomic standing, was not expected to change. If the government's ability to curry favor with one group at the expense of another group, to rob Peter to pay Paul, was corrupting and detrimental to all our freedoms and concept of self governance then, it is equally if not more true today. The industrial revolution changed the dynamics of what the general welfare might include; i.e. some pollution issues that did not exist in colonial times. It did not change the principle itself.
You are absolutely correct that it did not change the principle. What changed was society itself. When people were born, lived and died on the same piece of land that essentially fed and clothed them too there was never a problem when one became too old to work. The next generation was there to farm the crops and make the clothes. When people left the land and started working in factories they found themselves destitute once their working days were over. They no longer had an income so they became poverty stricken. The concept of Social Security and Medicare were devised as a means to ensure that 100% of all Americans would not find themselves destitute once they could no longer work for a living. From the perspective of the government this is clearly in the "general welfare" of the people because with large groups of destitute elderly people you are going to have to deal with rampant crime, slums and disease. Since this is available to 100% of the people it is not a means to "curry favor with one group at the expense of another group, to rob Peter to pay Paul". Instead it is a humanitarian solution to what would otherwise be a serious threat to the economic stability of this nation.