Today we face civilization killers of Climate Change, resource depletion (US Peak Oil was in 1970), perpetual oil-wars, oil-dollar funded terrorism, mortgaging children's future labor with $35 trillion in debt, and the coming Oil Famine because of Federal consolidation of powers forbidden it in the Constitution.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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."

The Preamble, the Federal mission statement, divided sovereignty with one mandate and one prohibition:

  • Mandated is the obligation to "provide" for defense.
    • The Federal government is granted unlimited taxing powers for the limited monopoly of violence (sovereignty) to wage war and prevent paths to war.
  • Restricted is the duty to only "promote the general welfare."
    • The powers enumerated to Congress in Article 1, Section 8 are subordinated to the Preamble.
  • Amendments 9 and 10 restate the Divided Sovereignty of the Preamble:
    • Amendment 9: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
    • Amendment 10: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

"We the People" retain sovereignty over the general welfare.

Two aspects of our Liberty intertwine in a Darwinian crucible of creative destruction to create the "general welfare":

  • Tolerance of Disruptive Minorities offering choices.
    • There are few Disruptive Minorities as tiny and disruptive as inventors. An "obnoxious individual" creates a better choice that eclipses entire industries.
  • Tolerance of people sorting choices via free markets and free speech, the Wisdom of the Many.
    • Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is not invisible, just tiny. It is the vast accumulation of tiny acts of liberty by each of us as we choose between choices.
    • The aggregated wisdom of all of us, with each of us acting in our own self-interest, is wiser than the wisest of us at choosing between choices.

Madison explaining the "general welfare" clause in Congress (Bounty Payments for Cod Fisheries, Feb 6, 1792):

"those who ratified the constitution conceived, that this is not an indefinite government deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers—but, a limited government tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms."

"If Congress can apply 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 establish teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of the 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 for 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; for every object I have mentioned would admit the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare."

Full discussion on the term “general welfare.”
 
"those who ratified the constitution conceived, that this is not an indefinite government deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers—but, a limited government tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms.
 
"The gentlemen who contend for a contrary doctrine are surely not aware of the consequences which flow from it, and which they must either admit, or give up their doctrine."
  
"It will follow, in the first place, that if the terms be taken in the broad sense they maintain, the particular powers, afterwards so carefully and distinctly enumerated, would be without meaning, and must go for nothing. It would be absurd to say, first, that Congress may do what they please; and then, that they may do this or that particular thing. After giving Congress power to raise money, and apply it to all purposes which they may pronounce necessary to the general welfare, it would be absurd, to say the least, to superadd a power to raise armies, to provide fleets, &c. In fact, the meaning of the general terms in question must either be sought in the subsequent enumerations which limits and details them, or they convert the government from one limited as hitherto supposed, to the enumerated powers, into a government without any limits at all."
 
"If Congress can apply 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 establish teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of the 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 for 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; for every object I have mentioned would admit the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare."