James Madison and George Will's "Cafeteria Constitutionalism"

Madison at 82

Dear A,

The right-wing -- from Rubio to Will -- alleges James Madison's resistance to federal power. 

As often happens, right-wing ideologues focus only those elements of history that confirm their prejudices.

This blind bias synchs neatly with other mono-polar beliefs such as the demonstrable insanity that taxes will never go up again. 

Speaking of taxes, I'm reminded of Ben Franklin, the most financially successful of The Founding Fathers.

Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris

25 Dec. 1783

"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law.

All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."  http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html

Notice Franklin's use of the word "welfare."

And in the article below, notice Madison's use of the word "welfare."

I also hope we are approaching the day when America heeds The Preamble of The Constitution wherein we see this same concern with "the general welfare."

"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."

There are only 52 words in the Constitution's cornerstone and four of them -- nearly 10% -- aspire to "promote the general Welfare."

I will close my preamble with an observation by Franklin that reveals the essential corruption of contemporary "conservatism."

"Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that don’t have brains enough to be honest." 

Pax

Alan

PS The final "user comment" below reveals the brainlessness that inclines "conservatives" to normalize falsehood.  

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The real James Madison

August 4, 2012

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-real-james-madison/2012/08/03/67f7a70e-dcdf-11e1-8ad1-909913931f71_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

George F. Will [“Ted Cruz, winning with a Madisonian touch,” op-ed, Aug. 2] was assuredly

correct when he described James Madison as the most “intellectually formidable 

Founder,” regarding his distinction as the father of our Constitution. In extolling his 

adherence to a set of enumerated powers, however, Mr. Will becomes something of a 

cafeteria constitutionalist, like most in the tea party, as it was Mr. Madison himself who 

nurtured greatly the concept of “implied” powers. In the third volume of his definitive biography of our fourth president, Irving Brant attributed to Madison the “proposal that, to make the government adequate to ‘common defense, security of liberty and general welfare,’ Congress have power ‘to legislate in all cases to which the separate states are incompetent.’ ” Such “incompetence,” one can reasonably argue is why we now have Social Security, Medicare and a new health-care law.

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22

Comments

pdt278

8/5/2012 7:23 PM EDT

I will grant you that Madison is famously known as the father of our constitution, one needs to remember that a whole convention took place and participated in the writing. Two of those members should also be singled out for the extraordinary participation - Hamilton and Washington. First of all, the convention would not have taken place without Washington's participation. It was only when he agreed to take part did the majority of the states agree to send delegates. And he did not wish to travel to Philadelphia only to tweak the Articles of Confederation. He and Hamilton both sought to increase the federal powers that were so lacking under the Articles. (As for Hamilton, he spent many hours helping Madison with the actual writing of the constitution along with the federalist papers, but is often forgotten as he never held elective office. He was also many times an a%^* hole and probalby found his due at the end of a duel.)

So while Madison is attributed the title of the father of the constitution, please don't forget who is the father of our country. Without Washington, who believed in a strong federal government with extensive powers, it is my belief that the USA would not exist.

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 Joe Palka, Gaithersburg:

In deference to Mr. Will, later in life Madison would evolve into a greater devotee to the enumerated powers, but it would be his own words and philosophies from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that would come back to haunt him. One can’t help but smirk a little as well, given the so-called “oppression” of our federal government, that the impetus for the creation of our sacred document was, according to Mr. Brant, in part the “tyranny of the states” and that the Founding Fathers would always regard the states only as, in their words, “subordinately useful.”