The trouble, of course, with “promote the General Welfare” is that all sorts of things “promote the General Welfare”. But since they put that into Article I, Sec. 8, one cannot simply handwave the ability away. This was made clear by the opinion of Justice Roberts in United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 70 (1936). If Congress can tax to provide Social Security, tax to provide SNAP, and most importantly tax to provide Medicare and Medicaid, it can certainly tax to provide a national program of healthcare.
The trouble with advocating the position that individual death or insecurity is the price of freedom is that almost everyone dislikes the thought that they might be the one to pay that price. Thus, for example, someone who is a strong advocate of gun ownership might posit the argument in response to someone trying to regulate gun ownership (relatively confident that, owning a gun, he/she won’t be the one to pay the price). But that same person will get very uncomfortable when someone suggests that they should remain insecure from the effects of terrorism as the price of being free from government invasion of privacy. And, of course, arguing that some should die that others will live a better life (which is what the assertion boils down to) isn’t exactly the sort of argument that goes well in a society of individuals who have a relatively selfish viewpoint when it comes to their own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (see: NIMBY for example).
Part of the trouble is that we have done such a good job over the years at eliminating the more unfortunate examples of tyranny from our society that we tend to forget why it is that we have all these protections from the dangers of a “bad” society in the first place. It’s easy to rail against a probably guilty defendant who goes free because of operation of the Fifth Amendment, since we don’t have too many examples in the present of Star Chambers. Perhaps the best that can be done is to educate the population of what is possible when protections are not put in place. But, if you try to do that, some will simply question whether or not such education efforts are just propaganda, and they might well be right.
Feudal society is a very close match to what Farnaby-style hyperlibertarianism would be in practice. (Start another thread if you think “American Libertarianism” still refers to saner 20th-century models.)
The constitutional issues regarding abortion are weird because it’s not the person’s rights that are in question, but whether the thing in question is a person at all.
I don’t know exactly what your political outlook is, so the following is not aimed specifically at you.
Liberals sometimes try to claim that the Second Amendment applies only to the types of guns that were around at the time. Yet–for some strange reason–they never apply the same sort of reasoning to clauses like the general welfare clause.
Leaper: I THINK you are trying to get at one of the most important things to recognize in the world today, which is being consistently ignored by pretty much everyone, especially the ones being victimized by it.
It is a manipulative trick argument which is based around the claim that if the government does ANYTHING to properly address the problem at hand, it will necessitate us all agreeing to overthrow the government of the United States, and permanently discard the Constitution.
As you say, the never spoken IMPLICATION is always that we all have to suck it up, and accept either the horrible problem itself, or an often dreadful alternative which is politically and economically advantageous for only one side, while completely ignoring the other side…all as the only possible way to resist revolution and an end to America as we know it.
This is why I personally long ago discarded any allegiance to a party, or even to a label such as liberal or conservative; not JUST because so many are abusing others in the name of each label, but because what I actually WANT to support and promote, is SOLUTIONISM.
But what that cite fails to note is that, at that time, Hamilton and others of his political stripe argued that the “general welfare” clause in Article I allowed Congress to do much more than what Madison claimed. This was referenced in the opinion I cited in the Butler case. So it’s not valid to assert that that clause had a different meaning at the time.
As I’ve said before, my thoughts on this is that societies choices always lead to a non-zero number of deaths, and it’s up to those societies to decide what that level is and what is or isn’t beyond that and unacceptable. I feel like many on this board turn a blind eye towards this reality. But it’s pretty much a universal reality. In China, for instance, they accept that air pollution (as well as a lot of other forms of pollution) are acceptable tradeoffs for economic prosperity and growth, despite the fact that this causes 100’s of thousands if not millions of deaths. In many European countries they allow their citizens to smoke in bars, restaurants and other indoor public places…despite the fact that this decision costs many lives. In the US we have decided, collectively, that the freedom of choice wrt a person being allowed to keep and bear arms is worth the violence this decision causes.
WRT speech, again, societies make choices. In Europe many countries have decided that a collective check on free speech and banning some forms of speech is a necessary function of the government. In the US we have decided that people should be free (from government interference) for most forms of speech (some, of course, are constrained despite this ideal). In China, they have collectively decided that all speech will be controlled by the government and filtered through the CCP to decide what the citizens should or shouldn’t see.
Healthcare is similar. In Europe, healthcare is thought of as a service that the government can best provide, that everyone should get good care, and that the citizens should pay for this through higher taxes. The US went a different route in the past, tying healthcare to employment and sort of trying to have it both ways…half a sort of quasi-privatized system, half a sort of quasi-public system, all a mess, neither fish nor fowl. But it’s a system that gives acceptable care to the majority of citizens (and costs us a mint). China…well, China doesn’t have either universal healthcare nor does it have a private system. But healthcare wasn’t really a major priority in China until fairly recently…the main emphasis is and has been on economic growth and expansion.
As to convincing others, I have no idea. I think we should change our healthcare in the US, but I can see how we got here and all of the hurdles we’d have to go to get from here to something better. I don’t have any real idea how to do that, basically I think that until it gets bad enough that a majority have bad outcomes with healthcare it won’t change. Or, maybe some states will figure out how to implement local UHC and it will be so impressive that other states will jump on the bandwagon. That’s how things generally change in the US. As for freedom of speech, I’m not sure I want what the Europeans have. To me, it would be too easy for the government to take more and more on themselves, while I think that it’s a good thing for white supremacists and racists to come out of the closet, so to speak…as that brings them out in the open and makes them a target. On the gun issue I like to think I take a middle road, keeping the 2nd and the spirit of the 2nd while wanting more regulation to mitigate the harm as best we can…just like we do with tobacco and alcohol. No idea how to get the two sides on any of these things to sit down, talk and, more importantly listen, but I have hope we find a way.
There isn’t anything “magical” about the constitution, other than it is used to frame our system of laws. It is subject to change and has changed 27 times. So just saying “because it’s a constitutional right” is not a valid argument.
There is a significant overlap between people who are “pro-guns” and people who believe the media is “fake news”. IOW, there are other Amendments besides the Second.
There seems to be significant overlap between people who are pro-guns for “defensing against tyranny” and people who are against Black Lives Matter. IOW, everyone thinks they are the ones defending against tyranny. In reality, liberty is not preserved by who has the most guns.
The preamble to the Constitution says “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.” So if an amendment appears to be in conflict with domestic tranquility, the common defense and the general welfare (i.e. random daily mass shootings), maybe it needs to be reevaluated.