Preamble

[03_SHOOTER]

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

[03_SHOOTER]

Commentary?

[FeelinFroggy]

promote the general "welfare" Define irony.

[03_SHOOTER]

Define irony.

Would you care to expound on that statement, and explain how you find "the general welfare" to be "ironic"? Are you even aware of what the framers meant when they used the words "general welfare"? I realize that Jeffersonian English is somewhat strange to most people today, due primarily to the fact that our Instatooshuns of lower Indoktrunashun do such a pitiful job of actually educating our young people, as well as the fact that most parents no longer imbue the paramount importance of being well versed in the history of America, yet even a cursory glance at history (or a simple search on the internet) makes it abundantly clear what the framers meant when they wrote those words contained in the Constitution.

Perhaps a bit of historical perspective is in order;

Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.

Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare."

But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.


"With respect to the 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."

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress.... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."

"The construction applied... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States," and "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof," goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to [the General Government's] power by the Constitution... Words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument."

"Aided by a little sophistry on the words "general welfare," [the federal branch claim] a right to do not only the acts to effect that which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think or pretend will be for the general welfare."

"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."

[HairyEyeball]

To fully comprehend the Constitution one must have more than an awareness of the language of the era, as 03 posits, but also an understanding of the value the drafters placed on rhetoric - in ithe original sense and concept of the term as understood by them. Far from being the term of dismissal used today, it was the highest form of oration of the era, a combination of logos, pathos and ethos: The logic of the argument, the passion or emotion the speaker (or writer) felt for his subject, and the 'value' of his opinion, the regard in which he and nis experise were held by the community.

Given that the most complete understanding cannot be gained by taking it at 'face value', an alalysis of the rhetoric of the document may provide the lens to focus more clearly on its meaning and intent. Due to the limit on 'characters per post', see the following for:


The Constitution of the United States - A Rhetorical Analysis

[HairyEyeball]

Gathered in a crowded chamber in the middle of a Philadelphia summer, the political elite of an emerging nation struggled to create a unified country from a loose amalgam of semi-independent states, and forge a government where their fellow citizens were to wield as much influence in that assembly as they. In theory, as they debated phrases and shades of meanings, the hardscrabble farmer was to be the equal of the plantation owner, the longshoreman to have equal voice to the ship owner. Merely ordaining it would be diametrically opposed to the inherent purpose: To do so, to phrase it as any form of edict, would invalidate the intent. To create a government wherein wealth, social standing or religion was irrelevant, where the drayman awaiting the outcome and the elite envisioning this ‘noble experiment’ would be equals under the law, both a new form of government and an egalitarian manner of expressing it were mandatory.

“We the people…” not we, the people of the United States, but ‘we the people’: The lack of punctuation implies inclusion as much as the phrase itself. In a successful effort to appeal to the commonalities of the populace, it is not ‘we, the educated’, or ‘we, the landed gentry’, or ‘we, the socio-political elite’ have decided for you, but rather the all-inclusive subject phrase ‘we the people’ has the implication of a democratic foundation for what is to follow. It should be noted that while the populace appealed to was primarily white, male and propertied, all of which was equally true of the framers, great pains were taken to suggest that wealth was no bar to equality.

The ethos of the framers was, at the time, a given; it was incumbent on them to produce a document worthy of equal esteem. The logical premises for the document to follow were obviously calculated to arouse strong positive emotions, while carefully avoiding any ‘emotional’ language. Indeed, they were intended to lay a foundation designed to appeal to disparate groups: The active supporters of the late revolution, the states rights advocates satisfied with the Articles of Confederation, the vast, neutral majority; yet avoid resistance from Monarchists, Tories and other obstructionists. Both the choice of language and the order in which the aims were promised – but never enumerated – is masterful:

“… in order to form a more perfect union…” A concession that while the Articles were adequate for their time, their time – and effectiveness – had passed. ‘More perfect’ may violate the rules of usage and logic, however in context, carries the weight of logos and pathos. The Articles of Confederation were inadequate – the joint and several states formed a loose confederacy, hardly a ‘union’. The logical intent was to coalesce these individual, semiautonomous states into a single entity, but not strip them of their individuality or subsume them in a homogenous whole. Establishing uniformity throughout the land was the primary implication, details would follow. The implied balance of the rights of states and of the people, united as a single entity, would form the ‘union’ as well as approach the expressed ideal of ‘perfection’.

“…establish justice…” Was the current system unjust? If so, to whom? The sentiment, incontrovertible in its nobility, obviates the fact that it begs the question. In practice, what passed for justice varied considerably from state to state and within states. In a ‘more perfect union’, justice would be uniform, firmly established and enforced, and most notably, just. What, after all, can be more ethical, logical, and covertly emotional than an appeal to justice?

“…insure domestic tranquility…” The conflicts between individual states, between holders of worthless continental currency and the weak (and impoverished) central government, between frontiersmen and urban merchants, ‘free men’ and powerless tax collectors were fomenting ever greater unrest under the articles. The phrase logically follows the invocation of justice, as the ideally just nation would maintain a more idyllic existence. To maintain its legitimacy, the new government faced the necessity of depolarizing internal disputes as well as dealing with those external forces exacerbating them. By avoiding mention of any specific dispute or faction, the phrase was acceptable as intent.

“…provide for the common defense…” Attacked by the French on the north and Spanish on the south, British and pirates on the high seas, neither the joint and several states nor the debating society that passed for a central government had the authority to raise an army or navy. Virginia militias would fight neither in Carolina swamps nor Pennsylvania forests; New York sailors would protect neither Georgia cotton ships nor Nantucket whalers. By implying a commonality of defense – and specifically defense – the framers both suggested unity, and intentionally avoided mention of anything subject to interpretation as aggressiveness or belligerence.

“…promote the general welfare…” Not to provide, merely to ‘promote’; not food, employment, cleared land nor shelter, merely general welfare. Out of context, it appears almost a ‘throw-away’ line, added to round out the general intent, yet in placement and context, it ties the individual to the whole, subsuming both the individual and the states. As with every phrase in this paragraph, its power lies not in any explicit promise, but as a thread in the mantle of unification, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. It suggests a promise that the document it prefaces is both noble and beneficial.

“…and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity…” Not mere freedom, but liberty, not the mere state thereof, but the Blessings: For a people of varied beliefs and degrees thereof, what could be more desired than to be rewarded by a Supreme Being? As a rhetorical device in and of its era, the invocation of the Creator granting approval to any enterprise was to presuppose its success; to an enterprise as bold as the founding of an entire nation, it bespoke a confidence calculated to sway those who harbored doubts as to the feasibility of such a radical departure from any known form of government. Note, too, that in the handwritten versions, Blessings in capitalized: Nowhere else in the document is any but a proper noun capitalized in mid-sentence. The contemporaneous writings of the framers suggest this is less an incongruity than a specific invocation of a Higher Power. In an age where religion still explained more than technology, the artifice of insinuating the Lord was a ‘partner’ in the enterprise cannot be ignored; that it was done this artfully avoids the controversy certain to follow any specific religious doctrine while – again – appealing to all.

Further, the phrase suggests an unlimited future guaranty of liberty, that generations unborn would never return to the yoke of tyranny. Not only would those present enjoy the liberty granted under the document, but it held forth the promise that their descendants would retain it: A powerful argument for embracing it.

“…do ordain and establish…” Merely ‘establishing’ the governmental system contained in the following document was, despite being contingent on acceptance by the bodies therein and the individual states, a pedestrian statement of fact (if not of hope). Knights were ‘ordained’. Priests were ‘ordained’ – a further acknowledgement, perhaps, of Divine favor? The inclusion of the term was calculated to inspire a conviction that the governmental system about to be described was not merely a system of government, but a shining example to the world of an ideal of the form, and its merits, rather than its creators, fairly demanded its immediate ratification. Too, it was presented as a fait accompli: “We the people…do ordain and establish…” The government it postulated, despite its audacity, was such that by merely being described and framed, it was virtually called into being. This was not a request for consideration, rather it announced a decisive statement of fact.

“…this Constitution for the United States of America.” What United States? As yet, it existed only as a concept, embodied solely in the minds of the framers, and in the document itself. By prefacing it with such noble ideals, however, this single sentence manages to convey the inescapable conclusion that the only way to achieve them is to accept the document as an established fact – to do less would, in effect, render both the people and the fledgling nation individually and collectively less. Constructing the preamble in this manner, using implication and inference, the framers managed to collectively include the entire populace – not citizens, as the term had a pejorative connotation – but the ‘people’, among whom they placed themselves as equals, set noble and desirable goals the document would (not may, not was intended to, but would) achieve, and further the concept of unity, of those people and of their states.

[HairyEyeball]

Due to the content constraint of the format, part 3 of what should have been a single response:

Noble sentiments all, and their presentation equally admirable: Unimpeachably pure in their statement of purpose, as deceptively simple as they were admirably crafted, these grandiose promises were unlikely to achieve fulfillment by merely being wished into existence. As eloquently as the improbabilities of achieving them were linguistically avoided, it was still necessary to provide the structure: A structure within which competing interests would be coerced into harmony (grudging or otherwise); within which uniformity of currency, post roads and offices, tariffs and duties would be achieved; within which balances must be struck between a central government with greater powers than under the Articles of Confederation, yet not so powerful as to inspire the fear of a return to monarchy. All this and more was implied, inferred, almost suggested and barely hinted at in the preamble. Delivering on these promises would test the integrity, the ingenuity, the foresight of the framers: Could the document so introduced reach the lofty expectations it inspired? Would the people accept it – New England whalers and Virginia planters, city dwellers and frontiersmen?

Analyzing the rhetoric of the balance of the Constitution, composed and debated by men who had participated in -and won - a revolution against arguably the greatest power in the world at the time, who had experienced the shortcomings of their first attempt at building a nation, unifying disparate 'States' under the Articles of Confederation, may not be the single unique path to comprehending it, but it is, perhaps, the truest.

Understood from that perspective, one might be more cognizant of what the intent was of the creators of this revolutionary government that promised so much, and why its founders labored over the specific language: The words and phrasing of the document are critical, and the degeneration of the English language, the denigration of the principles of rhetoric, and the sense of 'entitlement' foisted on those who have never earned it by unscrupulous politicians and biased 'news reporters' are clearly at the root of the misconceptions and blindly accepted intentional misinterpretations we suffer.

[FeelinFroggy]

Relax fellas. My attempt at a somewhat "humerous" post has been shot out of the sky. The term irony was meant to be used in correlation between our well-being as tax payers and the perversion of power to give money to people who are just plain lazy and who, in general, do not provide for the "general welfare" of anyone.

[SlightlyCatholic]

This Forum on the Constitution is turning into a Doctoral seminar. I guess I need to buy a better "Word of the Day" calendar.

[HairyEyeball]

Caught the irony, even from an amphibian. Calling the forced redistribution of income from the productive to the parasitic 'welfare' was a stroke of genius on the part of the lib who thought of it - moreso when it's obvious he's probably the only liberal who's read at least that far into the Constitution.

[Javelin66]

Would you care to expound on that statement, and explain how you find "the general welfare" to be "ironic"? ...

... I realize that Jeffersonian English is somewhat strange to most people today, due primarily to the fact that our Instatooshuns of lower Indoktrunashun do such a pitiful job of actually educating our young people, as well as the fact that most parents no longer imbue the paramount importance of being well versed in the history of America, yet even a cursory glance at history (or a simple search on the internet) makes it abundantly clear what the framers meant when they wrote those words contained in the Constitution...

Perhaps a bit of historical perspective is in order;

Or, perhaps, a sense of humor.

This has been the most unintentionally hilarious thread I have ever read.

[03_SHOOTER]

Caught the irony, even from an amphibian. Calling the forced redistribution of income from the productive to the parasitic 'welfare' was a stroke of genius on the part of the lib who thought of it - moreso when it's obvious he's probably the only liberal who's read at least that far into the Constitution.

Unfortunately, the first "lib" to think of it was called a Tory, and it was carried over into our own government by those Tories that remained afterwards, and has not only continued unabated here, to one extent or another, ever since, it has in fact grown to the point where we are today.

Was it not the Congress in 1794, whose appropriation of $15,000.00 for the relief of French refugees from the insurrection in San Domingo that prompted James Madison to rise and state that “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”?

As further evidence of this "charity" with the money of We The People, one has to look no further than the Constitution of Maryland (1776) wherein the 33rd Article clearly states (in part) "...yet the Legislature may, in their discretion, lay a general and equal tax for the support of the Christian religion; leaving to each individual the power of appointing the payment over of the money, collected from him, to the support of any particular place of worship or minister, or for the benefit of the poor of his own denomination, or the poor in general of any particular county:...", something that no doubt today would be ruled "unconstitutional", but only because it would be called a violation of the mythical "separation of church and state".

[03_SHOOTER]

This Forum on the Constitution is turning into a Doctoral seminar. I guess I need to buy a better "Word of the Day" calendar.

Well Tim, America is after all, advanced citizenship, and it is incumbent upon all of us to know what our Rights, and our responsibilities are if we are in fact going to be proper guardians of the Constitution that many of us have sworn to "...support and defend...".

[SlightlyCatholic]

I didn't mean anything negative by my comment. I am just impressed with the level of discourse that these discussions are churning out.

[03_SHOOTER]

I didn't mean anything negative by my comment. I am just impressed with the level of discourse that these discussions are churning out.

No offense was taken Tim, and in fact my only concern here is the rather conspicuous lack of participation in them by other members of the Forum. It was my hope that our discussions would raise the interest of some of the other members, and incite them to participate, if only to ask for clarification of an issue they might be unclear about.

[SlightlyCatholic]

I'm not sure how the others feel, but I personally feel that both of you (HE and you) are WAY over my head as far as both the quantity and quality of your arguments. I'm hesitant to join in because frankly I think both of you would make me look stupid just by your high level of competency in the subject of Constitutional Law. It's sort of like a pee-wee hockey player doing a face-off in a Stanley Cup playoff game. I don't think the lack of participation points to a lack of interest but rather a fear of incompetency in the given subject area.

[03_SHOOTER]

I'm not sure how the others feel, but I personally feel that both of you (HE and you) are WAY over my head as far as both the quantity and quality of your arguments. I'm hesitant to join in because frankly I think both of you would make me look stupid just by your high level of competency in the subject of Constitutional Law. It's sort of like a pee-wee hockey player doing a face-off in a Stanley Cup playoff game. I don't think the lack of participation points to a lack of interest but rather a fear of incompetency in the given subject area.

I fully understand, but let me ask you this, how did you learn to ride a bicycle? Did you learn by watching other people ride their bicycles, or did you get on one and try to ride it yourself?

This is no different, you can read the Debates at the Federal Convention, the Constitution, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, and all of the other historical documents you want to, but until you actually engage in discussions with others on the subject, and even get your fourth point of contact handed to you a few times because you hadn't thought something through sufficiently, you really haven't learned the critical thinking skills necessary to truly develop a full appreciation of them. As both H.E. and I know, the Constitution was a compromise, reached by the participation of 55 men, each from distinctly differing areas of our new country, each having the interests of his specific State in mind, as well as, in some cases, distinctly different views on what shape our new nation should take, which is why 14 of the 55 refused to sign it, and Rhode Island didn't even send any delegates!

[SlightlyCatholic]

You've got a point, and debate/argumentation is a large part of my current status as a philosophy student. The Socratic Method is an invaluable tool in the philosophy classroom. I guess I just don't feel qualified to talk about something I don't know a whole lot about...but, as you stipulate, you can't succeed at something you never attempt. Perhaps I'll take a critical look at the founding documents and try to add to the discussion in the near future.

[03_SHOOTER]

You've got a point, and debate/argumentation is a large part of my current status as a philosophy student. The Socratic Method is an invaluable tool in the philosophy classroom. I guess I just don't feel qualified to talk about something I don't know a whole lot about...but, as you stipulate, you can't succeed at something you never attempt. Perhaps I'll take a critical look at the founding documents and try to add to the discussion in the near future.

THERE YA GO! That's the spirit (no pun intended).