Today is a day to remember Lena Sittig and the Brooklyn Christmas Tree Society.
With the deep poverty and inequality in our society today, it seems that poor children will have to rely on the kindness of strangers rather than those elected to “promote the general welfare,” as the preamble to the Constitution says.
For those who have forgotten, please re-read the Preamle to the Constitution, which places promoting the general welfare right up there with providing a common defense.
“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.”
If our society spent as much on establishing Justice and promoting the general welfare as it does on our common defense, we would have a far more perfect Union.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
THANK YOU, Diane.
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In addition, Article 1, Section 8 also mentions providing for the general welfare:
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”
General Welfare would include universal health care, free education K-16+, a living wage and help for the elderly and disabled, etc.
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I concur with Yvonne. On days like today, when we have time to reflect on our personal lives, it is as important, as Americans, to reflect on our national purpose. I can think of nothing more appropriate than taking time to read the Constitution on Christmas Day.
Hopefully, those who claim to be “constitutionalists,” who claim to believe that the Founding Fathers and Framers of the Constitution had some eternal, immutable wisdom, will learn that neither the Founders nor the Framers ever claimed such erudition. While our forebears looked to Roman law and Greek philosophy and philosophers like Locke for guidance and inspiration, they adapted those ideas with the hope that future generations would use to refine their reality to adapt their history and experience.
I’ve been spending time today rereading Isaiah Berlin’s writings on Vico and Herder. Berlin was arguably the clearest mind to argue for pluralism as a social and political idea. In his conclusions on the originality and value of Vico, two quotes stuck out for me that apply to how we should view and read the Preamble: “…it followed that more than one equally authentic, equally developed culture was possible, and that such cultures could be widely heterogeneous, could, indeed, be in comparable and incommensurable. This entailed genuine pluralism, and an explicit refutation of the belief that man everywhere, at all times, possessed an identical nature which, in its quest for self-fulfillment, sought after the same ends, and that this, indeed, was precisely what constituted man’s essence.” and “Historical insight for [Vico] is a form of men’s awareness of themselves as purposive beings whose modes of thought, feeling and action alter in response to new needs and activities, which generate new institutions, entire new civilisations, that incarnate men’s nature.”
Let us hope that the idea of a living Constitution—one that incorporates an understanding of the messiness of history, one that takes into account changing social, cultural and political norms that can still form cohesive communities that work toward a national ideal, one that looks to the Founders and Framers as fallible advisors, not static icons, one that is based on aspirations, not fears or fundamental misconceptions—is one that will prevail in the near future. To me that might be the only way for us to emerge from what has certainly been the darkest year in our nation’s history in generations. I hope Lena Sittig would approve of these thoughts.
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Quite correct, Diane, quite correct!
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Perhaps Walter Williams can help you understand: https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2003/10/01/is-it-permissible-n1153681
The money quote:
“James Madison is the Constitution’s acknowledged “father,” and here’s what he had to say: “With respect to the two 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.”
Thomas Jefferson echoed similar sentiments, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.””
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SC Math Teacher,
Our Constitution has evolved in many ways, has it not?
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For an example of how both Madison (as secretary of state) and Jefferson (as president) both adopted and acted on an expansive view “to promote the general welfare” one need only to look at the Louisiana Purchase. The circumstances of its purchase are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, yet they agreed that such a cheap expansion of the nation would and both to its “general welfare” and “defense” by creating both opportunities for citizens (resources, population expansion, etc.) and a larger buffer of protection of the nation-state. Madison’s admonition not “To take them in the literal sense” was not an argument against a living constitution that adapted to the ages, it was a warning that future generations should carefully consider how to protect the ideas in the Constitution. His actions as secretary of state and president abound with examples, as Henry Adams’s histories of the Jefferson and Madison administrations make abundantly clear. To take his words too literally would boil down to the notion that amendments and the legislative process were unconstitutional which is what so-called “constitutionalists” would have us believe. They choose to ignore the Framers when it suits them and fetishize the parts of the Constitution that support their misconceptions.
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It certainly has, via amendment. Much of what the federal government does today is unconstitutional.
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Greg,
That falls under foreign relations, properly the province of the federal government. Things like education, food stamps, housing, and legions of other items, do not.
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And I notice that neither of you take on Prof. Williams directly.
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SCMT, unfortunately I am am very familiar with Williams and townhall.com (which I just noted spellcheck wanted, very poetically, to change to downhill.com). Williams has suspect degrees in economics, not history or political scientist, and has made a career of writing irrational and shoddily-sourced polemics. Townhall is, well, townhall.
If you’re actually interested in some nonpartisan discussion of the Constitution, what it means, and how our understanding of it has evolved, I highly recommend Corwin & Peltason’s “Constitutional Law.” Warning: it is much longer, detailed and sourced than any screed on townhall.com.
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Have you noticed that no Republican talks about the “general welfare.”
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They do, however, talk a lot about generals and welfare. They fawn about the wrong one and irrationally complain about and unceasingly try to undermine the other.
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Promote the general welfare is freedom and freedom from an oppressive government. Our freedom has been impinged beyond belief, especially by the federal government.
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I think the Founding Fathers used words carefully. “Promote the general welfare” doesn’t mean “ignore the general welfare.” It means “promote the general welfare.” The Founders made clear in their writings they did not want to reproduce a state with a powerful clergy and vast gaps between the very rich (the nobility) and the tradesman and farmer. We have a president in thrall to religious groups and wealth gaps the Founders would abhor.
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