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Source link: http://archive.mises.org/12214/remember-the-father-of-the-constitution/

Remember the Father of the Constitution

March 16, 2010 by

We could all profit by remembering Madison’s understanding of the federal government authorized under the Constitution, a sharp contrast to what we see everywhere around us. FULL ARTICLE by Gary Galles

{ 3 comments }

Beth Haynes March 16, 2010 at 11:29 am

I wish you had included the sources for these wonderful quotes. any way you could put them in the comments?

billwald March 17, 2010 at 11:28 am

As in most legislation, comments about the Constitution are immaterial. Only the text matters. The text of the Constitution produced the government we now have, the government about which Libertarians and Republicans are continually complaining. Given the historical and political situation of the last 250 years, could the Constitution have resulted in a different sort of government than the one we now have?

For example, given that the Constitution permits Congress to set the rules for its own election, could the Constitution have given us a multi-party system? If so, then why didn’t it? If not, then do we have the government that Madison wanted or did he screw up?

J. Murray March 17, 2010 at 12:34 pm

billwald -

If the text of the Constitution mattered, then we would defenitely NOT have the government we have today, it would be close to the Libertarian ideal. If it wasn’t for the convenient changing of the definition of a few key words, primarily general welfare, regulate, and commerce, none of the abuses today would even exist. The Commerce Clause for instance doesn’t mean Congress may make any law it choses so long as there is some tenuous connection between trade over state borders, it means that Congress must make commerce regular. The meaning of regulate we understand today didn’t exist until nearly a century after the ratification of the Constitution and was a completely politically created definition.

Further, the US Constitution says nothing about desency standards that courts use to determine first amendment issues. The Constitution textually says “Congress shall make no law”, yet we have a Federal Communications Commission and campaign finance law. The second amendmnet says, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”, yet we have a host of regulatory requirements on licensing weapons and even outright banning of certain classes of weapons.

We have a reason to complain because even the text itself is being ignored. Definions of words are being changed, rules are being added that don’t exist anywhere in the document, it’s being interpreted to specific situations when no Constitutional provision allows it to be interpreted under any circumstance, and so forth. Even the notion the Supreme Court can use precidence ahead of written law and even reverse law on Constitutional grounds does not exist, that power exists with the individual States and with the People. Yes, individuals are permitted, Constitutionally, to completely ignore laws that are created without explicitly granted powers to the body that passed the law. They are unenforceable and the States and the People are expected to ignore the laws that are not legitimate.

Those who claim the text of the Constitution led to this mess never actually read the text of the Constitution. Our mess was entirely becuase of loose interpretation of the text or obviously ignoring the text entirely.

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